"peat" poems
fischers rap
on a hot tin roof
bristol creek pools
over rock and seed
english wolfhound (and the barkbuster)
stroll pine lane
vibrant colors
of a cool spring
in cob yellow and
forest green
field mice squander
in cotton wind
goats and ferret
hold seven hour trim
raven and ****
meddle and forage (on a splendid fiaker goulash!)
crickets and frogs
hidden
in swollen grey logs
creepers fill the
cut stone walls
coy wolf high
on a frayed white rope
eagles perched
at trudy’s bend
catamounts laze
on a snow base cedar
(pared arbutus bent
through a failed ground rock)
brush spider spins
a timely web
brown bears fumble
at the spirit jamboree
quizzical squirrels
crack their nuts
as pillow clouds float
over telegraph trail
12 point dances
on talus and scree
hen hawks float
in a big hard sun
clydesdale and coach
trot copper smith road
(glancing down
on finch and the warbler
whistling through
colander row)
lavender fills
the peat soil box
mountain cats
guard the heavenly gates
black eyed ridge
is wide and open
the country squire hails
this fruitful land
Mar 7, 2017
Mar 7, 2017 at 12:18 AM UTC
Their boat turned in towards us
ready to board our vessel
to take us to their island,
a fastness, craggy, bleak, treeless.
To winter peat fires, gales, darkness,
weird northern tales of gods and trolls,
black nights seared by bright light curtains,
a violent Viking heritage.
A place where cold sea and ocean
overturn the crippled sea stacks,
our lives in the boarding party's
hands and our skilful Shetland pilot.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 9:53 AM UTC
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pin rest; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the ***** sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining **** among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a *****
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no ***** to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
6.6k
I am Autumns baby
my bones align every Autumn season
I come alive, rising from the earthy soil
I'm Summers poison,
my blood all hazey sunsets and leaf mulch
It's just something about the way the dawn and dusk shaded leaves flutter delicately onto my bronze barked skin
and the way the forest breathes, shedding it's summer shroud of green, canopy now thin
anticipating the snarling undertow of winters frosty bite
how the branches twist their arms and fingers,
reaching up to the light,
sky as blue as my doe eyes
the sunsets are all for me, low and piercing,
using her fiery fingers to stroke my face
I dance naked with the birds, the trees and the sun, a blur of grace
I'm all variations of brown, with the occasional pop of green
my lungs house my earth and its flower children, in my rib cage built of twigs with a magic sheen
my hair cascades like a molten copper mess
I'm a reflection in a lake, beautiful crystal but a construct you cannot caress
luke warm, barren branches and burning peat
crows, shimmering sunsets and crunchy leaves under your feet
I am Autumns darling
KG
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 8:02 AM UTC
Well-tempered
As Bach's staccato joy takes hold
Of Book 1: Prelude No. 3
A clavier so mild, calm
Lagavulin-scented air
Peat moss, weather fair
The happy harpsichord
And the placid piano
Join in my glass
Mingling, giving the whisky
A nuance
Of elegance
Balancing the burn
Excellently
Aug 13, 2015
Aug 13, 2015 at 4:38 PM UTC
The day I fell off a mountain, these shoes were on my feet
When I lay broken upon the jagged rocks, these shoes were on my feet
When we walked the valley and through the creek, I felt Mother's natural peat,
The day he slipped, I rescued him with these shoes upon my feet
We made a fire and sat in peace with nothing but the sleet
The day we grasped and found nothing there, these shoes were on my feet
We drank the icy cool that she gave to us with open mouths to greet
When rubble and we flew with momentous speed, these shoes were on my feet
The day you brought me to the sunny hill I felt the heavenly heat
Nothing below us once off the edge, even in freefall these shoes are on my feet
Together we hike and row and climb like two brothers always in beat
I look down to see nothing but rock and know I die with these shoes on my feet
Rocks we skip on the glass-like river so smooth, eloquent, and neat
We approach our doom with mighty force my shoes laced on my feet
Singing of folk with not a care in the world, I and my brother do speak
We do collide with the rock with unspeakable speed these shoes take the shock for my feet
You lend me your tool out of kindness and I know it only takes two for a fleet
Our bodies cease to move but the water still falls, these shoes twitch not on my feet
I lay beside you, it feels safer than home here with these people tonight that I meet
My shoulder is bashed and I lay on my front, I look back to see the shoes on my feet.
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 7:45 PM UTC
Many a miner has gone
into the deep pit
to receive the dust of a kiss,
an ore-cell.
He has gone with his lamp
full of mole eyes
deep deep and has brought forth
Jesus at Gethsemane.
Body of moss, body of glass,
body of peat, how sharp
you lie, emerald as heavy
as a golf course, ruby as dark
as an afterbirth,
diamond as white as sun
on the sea, coal, dark mother,
brood mother, let the sea birds
bring you into our lives
as from a distant island,
heavy as death.
4.8k
The Great Newfoundland novel (summation)
A young man brimming with
Townie **** and vinegar or
Bay boy brimming with obnoxious bravado
Eventually he leaves and discovers
How people treat fellow man
Seemingly beaten down
Genetic history Of Newfoundland Truck System
Alongside founders population variance,
Upward spike in heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancers
Lurks engrained learned hopelessness
Smouldering in "Newfie" jokes
You'd better hope I let it slide
Unless you wanna find out
What a peat moss bog smells like
Or how it feels to freeze to death
Tied to a crucifix
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 9:10 PM UTC
I
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,
Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,
She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,
Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.
II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,
Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.
III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
4.5k
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,
Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.
They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.
Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter
Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,
Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,
Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.
4.2k
I got handles that can handle any problem
If they the problem
I can solve em
I bench boys like I do at the gym
Sorry boys
All I do is win
Call it 1988
Cause I'm bringing the heat
Like #33
You wont forget me
But unlike triple threat
Call me self reliant
I'm a one man team
Call me Kobe Bryant
Like 2 Three-peat
Just like the Lakers
I'm taking over your town
33 winning streak
16 championships
The press always giving me
Full court press
I wouldn't call this chemistry
Its magic like Johnson
I feel like Jrue Holiday,
Underrated
But I feel like this our year,
Toronto Raptors
I got handles that can handle any problem
If they the problem
I'm they the problem
Dec 20, 2013
Dec 20, 2013 at 6:12 PM UTC
As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep
the black river of himself.
The grain of his wrists
is like bog oak,
the ball of his heel
like a basalt egg.
His instep has shrunk
cold as a swan’s foot
or a wet swamp root.
His hips are the ridge
and purse of a mussel,
his spine an eel arrested
under a glisten of mud.
The head lifts,
the chin is a visor
raised above the vent
of his slashed throat
that has tanned and toughened.
The cured wound
opens inwards to a dark
elderberry place.
Who will say ‘corpse’
to his vivid cast?
Who will say ‘body’
to his opaque repose?
And his rusted hair,
a mat unlikely
as a foetus’s.
I first saw his twisted face
in a photograph,
a head and shoulder
out of the peat,
bruised like a forceps baby,
but now he lies
perfected in my memory,
down to the red horn
of his nails,
hung in the scales
with beauty and atrocity:
with the Dying Gaul
too strictly compassed
on his shield,
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.
3.5k
a tumblr full of rocks
a pour of ichiro malt
and a stir
gan bei
and
ichi
to the yamazaki and nikkas
i am in the land of the sun
i go down to the land of the dead
mei hi ko
anejo
casa amigo,
to my brothers in arms
jose, i must have my agave
cheers to the alamo
to the land of the prohibition
kentucky
yippee kay yay
bourbon,
spicy rye kick
spur to the horse
giddy up, giddy up
riding off into the sun
set to kentucky
derby
bourbon
ballentines
tom ford west
make your mark
with maker’s mark
bottoms up
and now i am staggering
vichi patia
better than grey goose
aunt jiin
and all the cult gin
navy strength and **** juice
getting rowdy
like irish bloke jameson
and that **** scot
macallan
and his gang
oiban, glenfiddich, and
glenlivet
I am livid
at that son of a *****
son of peat
another round
i am monkeying around
monkey 47
sun set
sun rise
*** on the beach
i see kings and queens
louis thirteen
i am going to sleep
pappy van winkle
100 years
like rip van winkle
don’t wake me
stir and not shaken
good night, mama
sweet havana
neat
a shot of don papa
i go to sleep
Aug 18, 2018
Aug 18, 2018 at 8:47 PM UTC
Whisky, “The Water of Life”,
******** burning all down my chest.
Opening up my mind to endless imaginations
So I can put the world to rights
Like Superman in his pomp.
Feel that glow,
Spreading like a forest fire.
Feelgood Factor
Fathomless in its depth.
Who cares what peat, in what glens
Or valleys it came from.
Or what precipitation
Bathed those golden barley ears
On Celtic hillsides.
I’ll drink any Whisky,
Single or blend
White oak cask or not.
So long as it gives me that buzz
And blows my mind.
Inspiring the best
Or worst
In me.
Paul Butters
Jun 30, 2017
Jun 30, 2017 at 10:32 AM UTC
the garbage truck didn't turn up to-day
and the neighborhood trash stunk all day
a gross smell drifted across the street
it was akin to a rotting pile of peat
the council have heard the odd gripe
they've been told that the ******* is ripe
the residential area is no perfumery
our quarter acre blocks are so stinky
we'll be forced to vacate the neighborhood
as uncollected garbage is far from good
the air is heady with stale fish and curry
vegetable matter and an assortment of slurry
it is hoped that a truck can soon be found
as we'll be decamping the area's bounds
our noses have had a harrowing time
inhaling a stench which isn't sublime
Nov 24, 2013
Nov 24, 2013 at 7:42 PM UTC
cedar and gold
the kiss of flakes
little glaciers
melt in canoed-orbs
these footsteps tracking along
the era of winter
some birds
still sing
and I shake
in trepidation
I
little leaf
molding
peat and whiskey
keeps me warm
your cedar and gold
along a fire crackles
and I move in
the sweater
tight
the jean jacket
50’s boy
and laughter at
the weather
closer and
closer
still
Dec 17, 2016
Dec 17, 2016 at 9:38 PM UTC
The earth is her playground beneath her feet.
Everyone around her sees that she’s sweet
And full of an innocence in her play.
She won’t stop until she’s seized the day!
Life is a fun game for her to beat.
She plays with the tadpoles that she finds neat.
For them, playing with her is such a treat.
They dream of being frogs so that someday
She’ll kiss them and make one her prince.
She traps them in a jar once filled with peat
And takes them to her home so they can meet
Her family where maybe they’ll stay.
But their dream isn’t her dream in any way.
Now it’s fools and liars who softly bleat,
“She’ll kiss them and make one her prince.”
Oct 23, 2014
Oct 23, 2014 at 2:05 PM UTC
Crunching sound beneath my feet,
The feeling of oneness with the dust,
From which I was made,
Every step brings me deeper into my past.
I see it now, the gift of life,
Sprouting from the depths of the earth,
From what we deem lifeless,
Life emerges, in all its fullness.
My toes run through the soft soil,
Each grain screams out a testimony of a million years,
Each stone would cry if they could,
Watching our world nearing its doom.
The fault in our world is not out there,
It is in here,
In the hearts of reckless, egoistic men,
The men who could not care less.
Soil, sand and peat,
Rocks, stones and clay,
All interspersed together,
Designed without fault.
The Creator is all-loving,
Designed us the way we are,
With complete freedom,
And maybe that’s where our flaw lies…
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 12:14 AM UTC
Behind every Great Man
There is a greater woman to his side,
Classy Gal that oblige,
Knows when to let him stand in the front
Witty enough to challenge his mind,
Smart enough to know he'll be stupid at times,
Food for thought yea
she'll make you swallow your pride,
Above the small talk,
Strong enough to over look his weakness,
She's on a ledge,
when he's on edge,
or compromised to inconvenience,
She's confiding her confidence boost
will make you feel like a genius,
Strictly lenient, the arbitrary venus,
The better half per say,
Staring at her face you'll question your own faith,
How could nothing make something so great?
For peat sake yes she's a bit pretentious,
For keep sake she'll never leave you defenseless,
she pays much attention inline she's no cheap skate,
New birth love born from the soul mate!
Sep 29, 2016
Sep 29, 2016 at 10:03 AM UTC
Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, "'Tis mine, my children's and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees!
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize;
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'
Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds:
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys
Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
'This suits me for a pasture; that's my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well,--lies fairly to the south.
'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.'
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more.
Hear what the Earth says:--
Earth-Song
'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours, Earth endures;
Stars abide--
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.
'The lawyer's deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.
'Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
"But the heritors?--
Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer, and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.
'They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?'
When I heard the Earth-song,
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.
2.1k
Waters waltz land dancing,
Dragon flies flutter a buzz,
Cat-o'-nines torching tales,
Where beavers are logging
Time with fresh water fish
Who breach as they mouth,
Fly catching in a casted sea,
Mossy and bogged with peat,
And the colours, mottled, fey,
Brindled, brim, know they say,
There are lessons, hear stillness,
Punctuations in the spry singings
Of the never tardy larks, windrous
Riddles ripe rushing through reeds.
Jan 22, 2015
Jan 22, 2015 at 8:22 PM UTC
He knows what lies below.
This is where it all began: here
Beneath the bubbling sludge and ******* mud.
This is the home brew, the cocooning grounds.
His sturdy boots trudge through,
Hefting questions and glasses askew.
Somewhere to the side a fat swamp prince
Composes bog rhymes in ribbit meter.
Each squelching step sets a buzzing bunch
Of crystal dragons zipping away to
Slick peridot pontoons. A loon swoons
The expeditioner with a sobbing cry. He
Has said goodbye to reservations, to the
Long-dead preservation rights. He slogs through
The buzzing night. Yellow daggers clench
Between scaly steeltrap snappers and stones
With eyes blink in languid surprise, unnoticed.
He is lost, dying, unsure of his quest. He needs a
Cure. He knows it lies here, in the beginning place.
Their faces haunt his deathly guts and crush
His straining heart with need - need for the solution.
Need to survive, to prolong his life - alone!
So alone: the last. If only he could rest.
His nostrils quiver with the homesick stench
Of tails becoming legs and nipping lips sprouting
Sticky tongues. The answer, he is here for the
Only answer. Something below, below, down
In the dredges of history - in the slime of
Centuries, rotless and preserved. He will find it:
Some link, some closer thing he can revive
And test and rest as bedrock for his life.
A foot sticks in the overfriendly tar. No,
He will not pause. He has come too far.
In the birthing grime, some hungry memory wakes.
It knows what lies above, it thirsts to cease it.
It reaches, roils, pulls, rips with smelly squish-fingers -
Thirsting and thirsting to slake. It longs to reveal
To show, to make known to the traveler.
(All he has searched for is found here, it knows,
Organized and close. Held and safe below)
It reaches, grabs - thirsty - presses him into
A false step. A slip. A skritching clipboard
Of statistics curses in rustling indignance
As it flutters to the mud above a splattered head.
Science-frozen lungs fill with dread -
With life-giving peat. (It will show him) He ***** in
And burbles out a scream. (what he wants, show him)
This is where it begins, (this is his dream!) where it ends.
Now he knows what lies below. He lies - curled -
Quenched from growth. The eyes of unnoticed
Stones blink in surprise. Soaring swamp lyrics
Rise, a loon swoons with a sobbing cry.
He curls in peace and drifts alone
Now he knows what lies below.
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 30, 2010 at 7:10 PM UTC
I am Phil
I am Phil
Phil I am.
That Phil I am
That Phil I am
I do not like that Phil I am.
Would you like to drink some Scotch?
No Phil I am. No I would not.
I would not like to drink some Scotch.
Would you drink Scotch on the Rocks?
I would not drink Scotch on the Rocks
I think it tastes like ***** socks
So get down off that Dewars box
I will not drink a Scotch with you
No that is something I won’t do
I might drink ***** might drink gin
But drinking Scotch would be a sin.
Would you drink some Chivas Regal?
I think Scotch should be illegal!
What is it that you do not get?
I just don't like the taste of it!
Scotch just doesn’t suit me well
I do not even like the smell.
Give me wine or give me beer
But don’t talk to me when Scotch is near.
Would you like a single malt?
I don’t like Scotch. It’s not your fault.
Would you try some Lagavulin?
I won’t drink Scotch; I’m not foolin’
I won’t drink Scotch all by myself
With you or anybody else
I hate the smell
I hate the taste
To serve ME Scotch
Would be a WASTE!
Well!! You don’t have to cause a scene
Just try a sip, see what I mean
It’s really not that bad, at all
Don’t drink the bar stuff, drink the call
All the ‘Glens’ are really nice
Drink them neat, add 1 cube ice
One ice cube brings out the taste
Two or more would be a waste.
Try just a sip, and you will see
Then you might drink a Scotch with me.
Oh Phil I am
Oh Phil I am
You wore me down.
Was that the plan?
I guess I’ll let my scruples slip
And try a Scotch – a tiny sip.
Sip. Sip. SSSSippppss.
Oh (licks his lipsss)
This is good. This is really good,
I think that I can taste the peat.
It’s not too smoky, not too sweet
It’s not at all what I expected
Now I’ve got my thoughts collected
My admiration resurrected
I think I like Scotch, Yes it’s true.
I think I'll drink a Scotch with you.
In fact, Phil, I just might have two!
Do you have some Johnnie Walker Blue?
PwL April 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 10:46 AM UTC
Bear with a sore head
Takes coyote on post haste
Bore v. Trickster tried
Hung court just verdict
Bought ideologically
Branded! Brig banished
Like Guantanamo
Force fed on stale chalk
Red glib ref to beasts
Totalists with clubs
Tabulate ***** ad hoc
Bring shame to beating
When stops suicide?
Noble savage survives best
Practice leads young straight
Where head caravans?
Lossless nomads swim through sand
To moor oases
Connect with bazaars
Extra-exponential rock
Scissors paper cuts
Exacto-knifed sharp
Cards tabled until sure things
Made deals pay upfront
Cold hard confidence
Wannabe men drive sweet game
Put all together
Touch trumps tears takes no prison
Uncaged roam space free
Our place ancients planned
Body mind spirit heart team
Here earth *** soils worms
Compost ground debris
Bred sustenance seeds rich peat
Brings about the end
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 2:26 AM UTC
422
More Life—went out—when He went
Than Ordinary Breath—
Lit with a finer Phosphor—
Requiring in the Quench—
A Power of Renowned Cold,
The Climate of the Grave
A Temperature just adequate
So Anthracite, to live—
For some—an Ampler Zero—
A Frost more needle keen
Is necessary, to reduce
The Ethiop within.
Others—extinguish easier—
A Gnat’s minutest Fan
Sufficient to obliterate
A Tract of Citizen—
Whose Peat lift—amply vivid—
Ignores the solemn News
That Popocatapel exists—
Or Etna’s Scarlets, Choose—
1.8k