"pheasants" poems
I shall tread, another year,
Ways I walked with Grief,
Past the dry, ungarnered ear
And the brittle leaf.
I shall stand, a year apart,
Wondering, and shy,
Thinking, "Here she broke her heart;
Here she pled to die."
I shall hear the pheasants call,
And the raucous geese;
Down these ways, another Fall,
I shall walk with Peace.
But the pretty path I trod
Hand-in-hand with Love--
Underfoot, the nascent sod,
Brave young boughs above,
And the stripes of ribbon grass
By the curling way--
I shall never dare to pass
To my dying day.
4.7k
In the slant of the sun on the country-side,
Cattle and sheep trail home along the lane;
And a rugged old man in a thatch door
Leans on a staff and thinks of his son, the herdboy.
There are whirring pheasants, full wheat-ears,
Silk-worms asleep, pared mulberry-leaves.
And the farmers, returning with hoes on their shoulders,
Hail one another familiarly.
...No wonder I long for the simple life
And am sighing the old song, Oh, to go Back Again.
4.7k
Russian black grass and an ornate pattere garden,
pheasants basking in uncertainty
culpable designs eyeing towards.
Yellow book inclusion,
asks more than the obelisks shadows casting down the acers,
the mia crocus still a red mist
before laying the asphalt driveway.
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 5:23 PM UTC
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the ****** starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the **** on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
3.3k
i love the fact that most people
rather enter the concept
of karma rather dialectics
to argue their point - makes
emily austen seem like a nutcracker
of ideas to come from
ikea as the self-assembled semi-detached
heights, otherwise known as wuthering, heights
or the disco-ball done in mahoganny eyed splinter
shine - sheens the spot!
it's just so ****** blocked nose rotten,
the opposite of polite society,
a bit like the middle-ages... reigning
paranoia imported from a lost colony,
library cards of blue indian peasants
turned into pheasants that did the cancan dance
all of a sudden... miracles christ couldn't even forsee!
i'm free every saturday if you're hashtag up-for-it...
never mind... i'll leave my quote and oil my phone-number
for a missing mobile telepathic nuance on
when differentiating blue indians with garam masala
and red indians with mohawks - easiest game of all:
snakes & ladders, noughts & crosses... garam masala & mohawks.
Dec 5, 2015
Dec 5, 2015 at 8:26 PM UTC
that fizzy chemical
feeling
wraps itself around
my veins.
again. again.
not again.
i am full of blue smoke
and voracious wind voices.
i am full of melancholy
and still-born
dreams.
i miss you,
there, in the mirror.
you shine like
forgotten sun,
laugh like
terrific miniature
gods.
i am acetylene now.
i am neither human
nor beast. i return
to the ashes and ether
from whence I came.
i don’t belong here,
living as a fox among
the pheasants.
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 11:59 PM UTC
The fat lady came out first,
tearing our roots and moistening drumskins.
The fat lady
who turns dying octopuses inside out.
The fat lady, the moon's antagonist,
was running through the streets and deserted buildings
and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners
and stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feasts
and summinging the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hills
and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.
The graveyards, yes the graveyards
and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,
and dead, pheasants and apples of another era,
pushing it into our throat.
There were murmurings from the jungle of *****
with the empty women, with hot wax children,
with fermtented trees and tireless waiters
who serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.
There's no other way, my son, ***** There's no other way.
It's not the ***** of hussars on the ******* of their ******
nor the ***** of cats that inadvertently swallowed frogs,
but the dead who scratch with clay hands
on flint gates where clouds and desserts decay.
The fat lady came first
with the crowds from the ships,s taverns, and parks.
***** was delicately shaking its drums
among a few little girls of blood
who were begging the moon for protection.
Who could imagine my sadness?
The look on my face was mine, but now isn't me,
the naked look on my face, trembling for alcohol
and launching incredible ships
through the anemones of the piers.
I protect myself with this look
that flows from waves where no dawn would go.
I, poet without arms, lost
in the vomiting multitude,
with no effusive horse to shear
the thick moss from my temples.
The fat lady went first
and the crowds kept looking for pharmacies
where the bitter tropics could be found.
Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived
did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.
2.1k
My Brothers and Sister and Me
We all share the same genes
Though some hide it better than others.
Similarities And Differences are pronounced.
The apples don’t fall far from the tree
Though a couple of them bounced.
Apples baked into pies or
Thrown to the horses
Rotten and brown and wormy and
Delicious apple cider in the Fall.
Applesauce and apple butter and Appleton, Wisconsin
Looking for a job? Applications for them all.
Mountains, and mountains of books
Rivers, and streams of numbers
Hiking and running through canyons
Flowers and gardens and mushrooms and parks.
Shooting pheasants in the fields
Shooting stars in the dark.
Time will tell. Time will tell
Mom’s in Heaven, Dad’s in his own Hell.
Whose footsteps will you follow?
What size boots do you own?
Who most will you resemble?
When your own kids are grown.
We are laughing. We are laughing.
We are librarians and teachers
And accountants and staff and lumbermen always.
And still we all laugh.
“Thought one of you’d be a preacher.”
“Good money in that.”
Each generation’s gaps grow wider
As the trees grow taller the apples fall farther
Similarities and Differences well-defined
Still laughing. Still laughing at things
New genes swimming in the family pool
Some of the cousins can sing!!
PwL March, 2015
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 2:49 AM UTC
I was with Lewis
& his buddy Clark,
talked with them Mandans,
ran from the Blackfeet
& ate the pheasants too.
Sacagawea, that Shosone beauty,
was an awesome trailmate,
her eyes sparkled
with Milky Way dreams.
Twas' fate
that brought me here,
but I'm fine,
I truly am,
okay with that.
'Cause I enjoy
the spirit-life,
reminiscing
about my past,
adventure travels.
Aug 21, 2014
Aug 21, 2014 at 11:55 AM UTC
The timpani crash of thunder
The gentle side drum beat of autumn rain
While violin and cello echo the gusting wind
The Nightingale sweet sound of the piccolo echoes in the dusk
Early morn and the French horn mimics the pheasants call
And the well played flute could be the blackbird on the wall
But this can't be
Because man can never truly compose natures music
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 2:08 PM UTC
It is wild
and sporting,
a miracle dinner befitting
for the first day of christmas.
It is not like most birds.
It belongs to a pleasant family called pheasants.
Quite the plump and careful bird
i must add,
avoiding places of high glory and gory
Dec 5, 2013
Dec 5, 2013 at 10:54 AM UTC
The day you leave daisies in my pocket
is the first time I wore proper pajamas.
Right-handed scissors paint
with matching lip gloss,
attempting to stick words together.
My hands lay limply next to a wine glass
containing nothing but grape juice,
unhappy compromises.
Everything felt pinched and blue.
Last night I decided to write stories on my skin
with little holes in the paper,
nineteen socks under my bed.
I tried to remember the rain,
why it was lovely.
I ended up with wet shoes,
the smell of deserted food court
and secrets billowing from cigarette stubs.
Arizona breezes
carry the taste of hushed whispers,
making phone calls in the place of poetry.
The idea of pheasants,
tiny wrists
black ink crisscrossing,
hurried ‘X’s overlapping.
Flowers grow from stagnant air
Minted antibiotic breaths.
Heart monitors printed in newspapers,
your armada of pre-sharpened pencils
accidentally drip into coffee mugs.
Autopsies knit together,
authors of the curve of your spine.
You keep myths in glass jars
with intricate wire lids.
Why do we question the recipe for battle scars?
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 10:28 AM UTC
Have a passion for music.
A passion for plays.
Must be left overs of purplish haze daze.
A passion for words and good looking birds.
Elegant peacocks and pheasants that flap.
Tail feathers extended in preparation for glory.
Male display is a vigorous thing.
All for the sake of having a fling.
(c)LIVVI
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 5:06 PM UTC
I heard birds chirping this morning.
I wondered if birds conduct sonnets to other birds in their little bird languages.
Maybe there is a bird tongue considered "French" of bird tongues.
All romance and delight and cheese and devoid of home.
They speak soft when chirping of flights South
and loud of thawing North.
Are they dissatisfied?
Does flight seem like walking?
On the bus I hear chatter.
The workday not over. Wake up
get back to work. If you pause
remember you are a failure.
If you invest, call it working.
Unless it is French, do not pronounce anything that is not English correctly.
Condemn those who make mistakes at what you do not know how to do.
Say it is easy. Say you could do it better.
Don't try.
Fly South for the winter. Eat cheese by the fire. Pay a thousand dollars to hunt pheasants in an enclosure.
Give your son a hundred dollars.
Tell him to take her "somewhere nice."
Kick him out when he takes him "somewhere nice."
Watch people swoon at your feet; hate you; want to be you.
Hate people who want nothing you offer to give them.
Act as if the offer is a debt.
Give gifts and ask for a return on your investment.
Are your hands soft?
Are your wings weak?
Is there anything else you need
Dec 6, 2012
Dec 6, 2012 at 7:23 PM UTC
Each afternoon in Granada,
each afternoon, a child dies.
Each afternoon the water sits down
and chats with its companions.
The dead wear mossy wings.
The cloudy wind and the clear wind
are two pheasants in flight through the towers,
and the day is a wounded boy.
Not a flicker of lark was left in the air
when I met you in the caverns of wine.
Not the crumb of a cloud was left in the ground
when you were drowned in the river.
A giant of water fell down over the hills,
and the valley was tumbling with lilies and dogs.
In my hands' violet shadow, your body,
dead on the bank, was an angel of coldness.
1.2k
Content in a cornered part of the far reaches of France
Where the gypsies naked prance and hastily dance
Stars shine down on the groups of merry peasants
Who talk love tell and pluck soon to be dead pheasants
Here the children tell of monsters mixed to death with lore
Milk pours from every cow and food grows more and more
Rocks forget themselves underneath a bubbling river bed
No one cries for here no one is beckoned to the river of the dead
Illusions fortify their eyes and their beating red hearts
Cars are parked for the horses as their only means to start
On adventures to moon lit mortuaries candle lit dinner parties
Dancing with ghosts sporting their finest being quite flirty
I envisioned myself beneath the elm tree reading and writing
Listening to no sounds of husband and wife fighting
Some may call this place eden heaven or even impossible
But I see it as a world hopeful to soon be chronicled
Jul 12, 2011
Jul 12, 2011 at 3:45 PM UTC
the crackling howl of jackals
thrice fooled by
the thick dessert mirage of
wild turkeys and red-neck pheasants
for the gathering of sunset
Jan 9, 2013
Jan 9, 2013 at 9:38 PM UTC
Marshes and meadows
Sunshine and shadows
Gentle ripples on the calm river
Foaming rapids in white water
The jungle echoes in the semi-darkness
while daylight creepy-crawlies clear the mess.
Peasants toiling and pheasants scratching
as I spy a cricket somersaulting
The cactus the desert's prickly femme-fatale
elsewhere a lone leaf floats in the canal
Prairie dogs go popping
while hares go hopping
and ladies go shopping
Swans have formed a V-line
The flora too is divine
as bees nosedive in bee-line.
Seista seizes birdlovers too
Thus they miss out on the hoopoe's song
For the hoopoe, it does not sing on cue
since a bird may sing anytime to woo.
What a medley eh of scenery
Murky eve and dawning greenery
Ah, wherever you go nature's so panoramic
While we make and take pictures
God actually makes what's so picturesque!
Dec 29, 2017
Dec 29, 2017 at 4:10 PM UTC
I want to show you the pond
John says
ducks and swans
are there
and now and then
herons come
Elaine wonders
where the pond is
is it far?
she asks
no not far
just down through
the wood
here
down these rides
mind the brambles
he walks ahead of her
she follows
can you hear that?
he says
what is it?
blackbird
you can tell
by the song
she looks at him
ahead of her
she wishes
he would stay with her
she's not been
in these woods before
how big is it?
she asks
not that big
but big enough
you'll see
he says
back to her
walking on
that's a song thrush
he says
love the song thrush
she treads carefully
along the ride
she doesn't want
to catch her legs
on brambles
they reach a fence
and he climbs over
and waits for her
careful how you get over
he says
don't want to get
a splinter
in your leg
she climbs carefully
trying to keep
her skirt
tight to her legs
doesn't want him
to see up her skirt
but he looks away
out at the field
see pheasants
out there sometimes
he says
she climbs down
the other side
brushes her skirt down
and stands next to him
where's the pond?
over there
he says pointing
over the way
not far now
he walks on
and she follows him
he is just ahead of her
then he climbs over
another fence
it's here
she comes to the fence
and looks over
you'll have to climb over
to see it properly
he says
she climbs the fence
carefully
but he has gone down
towards the pond
staring at the water's skin
she walks down
beside him
standing there
a gentle smell
of flowers
hanging in the air.
Jan 3, 2015
Jan 3, 2015 at 4:20 PM UTC
Promises made
given and laid down in writing on stones.
I read runes in the ruins of what has become,
what they have done to me.
No longer free
I am devoured alive by those who contrive to control everything,those who bring nothing to the table and the table is bare,
I share my crusts with the beggars who sit on the street,in dark corners I greet them and then I console them
for they too have lost all to the mighty of Whitehall who don't give a damn,for
they are the ram raiders the modern day slavers and we're all in chains,laid on the slabs,looked at in labs,dissected,inspected and put out to tender,sent out as fodder for the high in society to shoot at like pheasants,for aren't we the peasants of old?
Life grows cold an old story indeed
those who can't pay are unable to feed.
So let us give thanks to those wonderful,fabulous,marvelous food banks who are there just in case we try to get out of the poverty trap that stares us in the face.
Fuck'em all down in Whitehall I know where I am and I am a man not a note in a margin but marginalised just the same,just a piece in some game that they play.
It'll all change one day though I may not be here to cheer but where ever I am,I will still be a man, and
not a laboratory experiment.
Feb 22, 2014
Feb 22, 2014 at 7:22 AM UTC
That was a jay
Jane said
that bird
we've just seen
it belongs
to the crow family
it's an Eurasian Jay
I was listening to her
but taking in
the line of her jaw
as she spoke
the lips
opening and closing
as the words flowed
it's a lovely bird
I said
what colour eggs?
she told me
and we were
walking up the drive
up the Downs
trees on either side
birds calling
rooks and crows
and the sound
of pheasants
from the fields
and cows mooing
and her hand
was near mine
as she spoke
I wanted to hold it
and put it to my cheek
and feel
the softness of her
but I let my hand
stay just an inch away
and I could smell
the scent of her
apple and hay
and something
she'd borrowed
from her mother
(I'd smelt it
when I was
at her parents house
the other day
for the tea)
what do your parents
think of me
after the third degree
the other day?
I said
we stopped and she said
they like you
and trust you
she said
they trust me anyway
but it is you
they were unsure about
but yes they have
taken you as trustworthy
she added smiling
I smiled too
glad I'd been thought
trustworthy
especially after
her mother's
scrutiny of me
the questions
she had asked
just on the border of things
that Lizbeth's a different sort
Jane said
she and ***
go together
like cheese and onion
but I am not like that
I don't mean to
sound prudish but
I couldn't not
before marriage
I nodded my head
and was nonplussed
about it all
we walked on
she talked of the man
her father knew
whose daughter
had got herself pregnant
and she was only 14
and there was hell to pay
and they left the area
and the girl
was taken some place
and it has worried Father
ever since
I see
I said
and she took my hand
and it was soft
and I sensed her
skin and warmth
and her body near mine
and there was sounds
of rooks above our heads
in the tall trees
and knew Lizbeth
wouldn't talk
of birds or such
she liked her ideas
of *** too much.
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 2:01 AM UTC
There were birds and there were bees
There were flowers and there were trees
Blowing in the breeze
There were brightly-coloured male pheasants
With sharp beaks
And camouflaged female pheasants
On the ground, all around
There were reed beds stretching
As far as the eye can see
They were there before the land
Was covered with forests
Now being given a hand by man
To protect the wildlife
Maggie
May 20, 2016
May 20, 2016 at 3:26 PM UTC
They Did Not give Their Lives:
Their Lives Were taken From Them.
The boy soldiers formed up in line:
the Sergeant inspected each in turn.
Colonel Forde (retired)
took the salute; the cadet’s
drilled colour party moved off.
Towards the village Cross
the troop marched on,
and as the band struck
up the tune “Blaze Away”
flocks of pigeons rose
from misted fields
exploding into flight
spreading like shrapnel
to enfilade the distant trees.
Crackling gunfire
echoed in the woods
and pheasants beat
from cover plunged
to earth, killed
in fern and bracken
by weekend shooting
party’s fusillade.
On the war memorial wreathes rested
where villager’s names inscribed on stone
are listed Unforgotten. The church bell
chimed an end to silent minute. A bugle
call died away as birds sang out an anthem.
Tony Brady
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 3:51 AM UTC
she could never imitate a cat or a dog, woman simply scolded man enough that man can relate to the two former state, and state that the third party misguides a share of concern for the two silences in terms of what man says: i think, which to the woman translates as: i scheme.
being with a woman would only
make me weak,
i'm sure there are enough
pheasants to strut the colar purple
colours translated via genetics
into wings from the depths of
the pacific... as i am sure
enough serfs and aristocrats
simply love to **** in order
to then look at aquariums filled
with ants; come my puppets come!
my fingers are eagerly awaiting
strain for the puppetry of being strained;
the king killed his queen in a raging fit
of jealosy... he's my caeserean digit now -
lo! behold the gravity of a chopped off
head of a gladiator like the anaesthetic of
the apple in salival drooling off the tree to the earth
in a quasi-rubber spandex strap: ah, almost, almost,
ah, almost, almost... drop!
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 9:18 PM UTC