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This English Thames is holier far than Rome,
Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone
To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there
Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!

Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take
Yon creamy lily for their pavilion
Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake
A lazy pike lies basking in the sun,
His eyes half shut,—he is some mitred old
Bishop in partibus! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold.

The wind the restless prisoner of the trees
Does well for Palaestrina, one would say
The mighty master’s hands were on the keys
Of the Maria *****, which they play
When early on some sapphire Easter morn
In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

From his dark House out to the Balcony
Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,
Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy
To toss their silver lances in the air,
And stretching out weak hands to East and West
In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

Is not yon lingering orange after-glow
That stays to vex the moon more fair than all
Rome’s lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago
I knelt before some crimson Cardinal
Who bare the Host across the Esquiline,
And now—those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.

The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous
With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring
Through this cool evening than the odorous
Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing,
When the grey priest unlocks the curtained shrine,
And makes God’s body from the common fruit of corn and vine.

Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass
Were out of tune now, for a small brown bird
Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass
I see that throbbing throat which once I heard
On starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady,
Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets sea.

Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves
At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe,
And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves
Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe
To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait
Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.

And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,
And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,
And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees
That round and round the linden blossoms play;
And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,
And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring
While the last violet loiters by the well,
And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing
The song of Linus through a sunny dell
Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold
And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold.

And sweet with young Lycoris to recline
In some Illyrian valley far away,
Where canopied on herbs amaracine
We too might waste the summer-tranced day
Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,
While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot
Of some long-hidden God should ever tread
The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute
Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head
By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed
To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.

Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,
Though what thou sing’st be thine own requiem!
Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler
Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn
These unfamiliar haunts, this English field,
For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield

Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose
Which all day long in vales AEolian
A lad might seek in vain for over-grows
Our hedges like a wanton courtesan
Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies too
Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue

Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs
For swallows going south, would never spread
Their azure tents between the Attic vines;
Even that little **** of ragged red,
Which bids the robin pipe, in Arcady
Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy

Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames
Which to awake were sweeter ravishment
Than ever Syrinx wept for; diadems
Of brown bee-studded orchids which were meant
For Cytheraea’s brows are hidden here
Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer

There is a tiny yellow daffodil,
The butterfly can see it from afar,
Although one summer evening’s dew could fill
Its little cup twice over ere the star
Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold
And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold

As if Jove’s gorgeous leman Danae
Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss
The trembling petals, or young Mercury
Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis
Had with one feather of his pinions
Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns

Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,
Or poor Arachne’s silver tapestry,—
Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre
Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me
It seems to bring diviner memories
Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where
On the clear river’s marge Narcissus lies,
The tangle of the forest in his hair,
The silence of the woodland in his eyes,
Wooing that drifting imagery which is
No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis

Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,
Fed by two fires and unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For love’s own sake to leave the other’s side
Yet killing love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia’s bard

With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,
Queen Helen lying in the ivory room,
And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy
Trimming with dainty hand his helmet’s plume,
And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,
As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone;

Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword
Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch,
And all those tales imperishably stored
In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich
Than any gaudy galleon of Spain
Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,

For well I know they are not dead at all,
The ancient Gods of Grecian poesy:
They are asleep, and when they hear thee call
Will wake and think ‘t is very Thessaly,
This Thames the Daulian waters, this cool glade
The yellow-irised mead where once young Itys laughed and played.

If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird
Who from the leafy stillness of thy throne
Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard
The horn of Atalanta faintly blown
Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering
Through Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets’ spring,—

Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate
That pleadest for the moon against the day!
If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate
On that sweet questing, when Proserpina
Forgot it was not Sicily and leant
Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment,—

Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!
If ever thou didst soothe with melody
One of that little clan, that brotherhood
Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany
More than the perfect sun of Raphael
And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.

Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,
Let elemental things take form again,
And the old shapes of Beauty walk among
The simple garths and open crofts, as when
The son of Leto bare the willow rod,
And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish God.

Sing on! sing on! and Bacchus will be here
Astride upon his gorgeous Indian throne,
And over whimpering tigers shake the spear
With yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone,
While at his side the wanton Bassarid
Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid!

Sing on! and I will wear the leopard skin,
And steal the mooned wings of Ashtaroth,
Upon whose icy chariot we could win
Cithaeron in an hour ere the froth
Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun
Ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,
And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,
Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast
Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans
So softly that the little nested thrush
Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

Down the green valley where the fallen dew
Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,
Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew
Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,
And where their horned master sits in state
Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face
Through the cool leaves Apollo’s lad will come,
The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase
Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom,
And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,
After yon velvet-coated deer the ****** maid will ride.

Sing on! and I the dying boy will see
Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell
That overweighs the jacinth, and to me
The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,
And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes,
And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies!

Cry out aloud on Itys! memory
That foster-brother of remorse and pain
Drops poison in mine ear,—O to be free,
To burn one’s old ships! and to launch again
Into the white-plumed battle of the waves
And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves!

O for Medea with her poppied spell!
O for the secret of the Colchian shrine!
O for one leaf of that pale asphodel
Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine,
And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she
Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased
From lily to lily on the level mead,
Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste
The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,
Ere the black steeds had harried her away
Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

O for one midnight and as paramour
The Venus of the little Melian farm!
O that some antique statue for one hour
Might wake to passion, and that I could charm
The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair,
Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair!

Sing on! sing on!  I would be drunk with life,
Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,
I would forget the wearying wasted strife,
The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,
The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,
The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!

Sing on! sing on!  O feathered Niobe,
Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal
From joy its sweetest music, not as we
Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal
Our too untented wounds, and do but keep
Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and ****** pillowed sleep.

Sing louder yet, why must I still behold
The wan white face of that deserted Christ,
Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold,
Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,
And now in mute and marble misery
Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me?

O Memory cast down thy wreathed shell!
Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!
O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell
Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly!
Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong
To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song!

Cease, cease, or if ‘t is anguish to be dumb
Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air,
Whose jocund carelessness doth more become
This English woodland than thy keen despair,
Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay
Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay.

A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred,
Endymion would have passed across the mead
Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard
Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed
To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid
Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,
The silver daughter of the silver sea
With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed
Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope
Had ****** aside the branches of her oak
To see the ***** gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke.

A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss
Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon
Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis
Had bared his barren beauty to the moon,
And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile
Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile

Down leaning from his black and clustering hair,
To shade those slumberous eyelids’ caverned bliss,
Or else on yonder grassy ***** with bare
High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis
Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer
From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear.

Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!
O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!
O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill
Come not with such despondent answering!
No more thou winged Marsyas complain,
Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!

It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,
No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,
The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,
And from the copse left desolate and bare
Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,
Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody

So sad, that one might think a human heart
Brake in each separate note, a quality
Which music sometimes has, being the Art
Which is most nigh to tears and memory;
Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear?
Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here,

Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade,
No woven web of ****** heraldries,
But mossy dells for roving comrades made,
Warm valleys where the tired student lies
With half-shut book, and many a winding walk
Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk.

The harmless rabbit gambols with its young
Across the trampled towing-path, where late
A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng
Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight;
The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads,
Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved sheds

Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out
Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock
Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout
Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,
And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,
And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill.

The heron passes homeward to the mere,
The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees,
Gold world by world the silent stars appear,
And like a blossom blown before the breeze
A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky,
Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody.

She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,
She knows Endymion is not far away;
’Tis I, ’tis I, whose soul is as the reed
Which has no message of its own to play,
So pipes another’s bidding, it is I,
Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery.

Ah! the brown bird has ceased:  one exquisite trill
About the sombre woodland seems to cling
Dying in music, else the air is still,
So still that one might hear the bat’s small wing
Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell
Each tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell’s brimming cell.

And far away across the lengthening wold,
Across the willowy flats and thickets brown,
Magdalen’s tall tower tipped with tremulous gold
Marks the long High Street of the little town,
And warns me to return; I must not wait,
Hark! ’Tis the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate.
April doesnt hurt here
Like it does in New England
The ground
Vast and brown
Surrounds dry towns
Located in the dust
Of the coming locust
Live for survival, not for 'kicks'
Be a bangtail describer,
like of shrouded traveler
in Textile tenement & the birds fighting in yr ears-like Burroughs exact to describe & gettin $
The Angry Hunger
(hunger is anger)
who fears the
hungry feareth
the angry)
And so I came home
To Golden far away
Twas on the horizon
Every blessed day
As we rolled And we rolled
From Donner tragic Pass
Thru April in Nevada And out Salt City Way Into the dry Nebraskas And sad Wyomings Where young girls And pretty lover boys
With Mickey Mantle eyes
Wander under moons
Sawing in lost cradle
And Judge O Fasterc
Passes whiggling by To ask of young love: ,,Was it the same wind Of April Plains eve that ruffled the dress
Of my lost love
Louanna
In the Western
Far off night
Lost as the whistle
Of the passing Train
Everywhere West
Roams moaning
The deep basso
- Vom! Vom!
- Was it the same love
Notified my bones As mortify yrs now
Children of the soft
Wyoming April night?
Couldna been!
But was! But was!'
And on the prairie
The wildflower blows
In the night For bees & birds And sleeping hidden Animals of life.
The Chicago
Spitters in the spotty street
Cheap beans, loop, Girls made eyes at me And I had 35 Cents in my jeans -
Then Toledo
Springtime starry
Lover night Of hot rod boys And cool girls A wandering
A wandering
In search of April pain A plash of rain
Will not dispel This fumigatin hell Of lover lane This park of roses Blue as bees
In former airy poses
In aerial O Way hoses
No tamarand And figancine Can the musterand Be less kind
Sol -
Sol -
Bring forth yr Ah Sunflower - Ah me Montana
Phosphorescent Rose
And bridge in
fairly land
I'd understand it all -
Martin Narrod May 2014
Something original. Of newer words, that originate from the pleasure and happiest of timeless incidents. The happenings, back of the park, near a set of restrooms, a pool of clear sea water and a purplish-red starfish. A sea cucumber. Trailing sea lions diving off of a cliff, a vertical display of rocks, moving a millionth of an inch each year. You caught me.  --------

I can't nail it. It happens to me when I sleep, it comes around me, over my shoulders and latches onto my breaths. I'm breathing and it creeps inside of me like a mealworm, I turn to look for it and it disappears again. It lives in a shadow but it is also a shadow of itself. An anomaly, a space for time and the tell of time, its hidden agenda, its positive nature, how it yields itself to prey, how it coos for a sweet smile, runs up to me in mid-day traffic, and kisses me, noon at military time.  ------  

The blessings come. All of them. Laid out on a table in red and white checkerboard, making the eggplant parm and the homemade vinaigrette. Peanut butter chocolate chip vegan cookies. A dandelion necklace that only fits around my wrist. It makes me weep some twenty years ago on a Playskool slide, orange, red, bright. I'm looking around my neck and still it's not there. Every where I want to be, every where I've gone and could go. I should go to California too but all of this...stuff, everywhere, under my legs, in my pockets, the closets tumbling high and low, I haven't had enough to change, and still I am wanting something else. You the same, my shoulders tell me stories, I listen and I fall asleep.  -----  

Sometimes my nerves grow quiet, my words grow- but then they just fall again, skittering in a lull plash of blue-green pond water. The bench I sewed to the ground. A tale of mirth and woe. I cannot call on you, you will not come. Sleeping beauty, blue eyes, blonde hair. I wrestle you in the day to day, the hour to hour. Minutes cannot go by. Pages that turn but I remember everything. My mind will never go.  -----  

Two pink letters in the post today. Maybe neatly placed for you. A fake-tattoo puffin, upper-left hand corner. My hands are empty, they have indecent memories, they write indelible superpowers. I can't go on. I run lake water over my ankles, slowly drift beneath arcing waves and cold grey skies. Half a day blue goes black, night comes and I whisper when the sky goes quiet. Nothing is as serious as this.   ------    


In a white box there are two pairs of shoes and a soft bear. The bear without the name. He doesn't speak to me so I leave him with the sea birds. Put them in a push cart and show them off, I take them here, I take them there. No one asks his name, where he's going, what he's going to do. ------------


Tuesday's are the worst. I count and count and count. I will never forget Tuesday's, twisting like a cuneiform jelly, fingernails spoiling me-meat, breaking the Styx crossing the river Rhine, there is nowhere that I will not go, only for me to cross time. To wait, I really hate waiting. Nothing comes between, I lie to a stranger and they fall in love instantly. I see you on Monday evenings and I want to kiss you gently, the sides of your neck, on the inside of your hand. Where do you go when all the shadows go? ----

Some of me is backwards. The waves shape the sky. A rabbit goes with a fire truck, a blueberry with a cephalopod. Back to the soft wood walls of the cotton luxe room. My legs have never felt so safe, you have never made my teeth so happy. In Russia you touch my face, I see you, a picture of you, any part of your eyes or the things you draw upon and I am instantly in love. I love you, a part of you, all of the parts of you, your soul is the only part of me disconnected. You are the happiest moments of my pleasure. You taste like Tahitian Vanilla and Acai berries. Gold grains hit our shins as we go like great wild horses through the alluvial plains. -----

I cannot count to you. There are no goddesses in numbers. I only have sleep, for you to look me square away into a bliss I have in a picture of the two of us, lost in our faces, our hands wandering each others knees. I sit across from you and I am not close enough. I go closer and I want to be inside of you, all across my limbs expanding our spiritual forms, intertwining in our skins. So I speak, I lay my words gently in front of you so you cross them as you walk our path, back from the sea into a narrow slumber. Sleep is the only place we all can play. You, me, her, her, and I.
Jupiter Mars P Moon
VENEZIA, "May" 19"th", 1910.


Jupiter's foursquare blaze of gold and blue
Rides on the moon, a lilac conch of pearl,
As if the dread god, charioted anew
Came conquering, his amazing disk awhirl
To war down all the stars. I see him through
The hair of this mine own Italian girl,
Adela
That bends her face on mine in the gondola!


There is scarce a breath of wind on the lagoon.
Life is absorbed in its beatitude,
A meditative mage beneath the moon
Ah! should we come, a delicate interlude,
To Campo Santo that, this night of June,
Heals for awhile the immitigable feud?
Adela!
Your breath ruffles my soul in the gondola!

Through maze on maze of silent waterways,
Guarded by lightless sentinel palaces,
We glide; the soft plash of the oar, that sways
Our life, like love does, laps --- no softer seas
Swoon in the ***** of Pacific bays!
We are in tune with the infinite ecstasies,
Adela!
Sway with me, sway with me in the gondola!

They hold us in, these tangled sepulchres
That guard such ghostly life. They tower above
Our passage like the cliffs of death. There stirs
No angel from the pinnacles thereof.
All broods, all breeds. But immanent as Hers
That reigns is this most silent crown of love
Adela
That broods on me, and is I, in the gondola.

They twist, they twine, these white and black canals,
Now stark with lamplight, now a reach of Styx.
Even as out love - raging wild animals
Suddenly hoisted on the crucifix
To radiate seraphic coronals,
Flowers, flowers - O let our light and darkness mix,
Adela,
Goddess and beast with me in the gondola!

Come! though your hair be a cascade of fire,
Your lips twin snakes, your tongue the lightning flash,
Your teeth God's grip on life, your face His lyre,
Your eyes His stars - come, let our Venus lash
Our bodies with the whips of Her desire.
Your bed's the world, your body the world-ash,
Adela!
Shall I give the word to the man of the gondola?
243

I’ve known a Heaven, like a Tent—
To wrap its shining Yards—
Pluck up its stakes, and disappear—
Without the sound of Boards
Or Rip of Nail—Or Carpenter—
But just the miles of Stare—
That signalize a Show’s Retreat—
In North America—

No Trace—no Figment of the Thing
That dazzled, Yesterday,
No Ring—no Marvel—
Men, and Feats—
Dissolved as utterly—
As Bird’s far Navigation
Discloses just a Hue—
A plash of Oars, a Gaiety—
Then swallowed up, of View.
Dorothy Apr 2014
But what about me!? What about my feelings!?
What about my needs!? It’s my heart you’re unknowingly stealing!

Don’t ignore my love, I’ll make you miss my presence
Show you what you’ve lost so you wished you never left it
Because I know you didn’t mean to drop my heart, here’s some glue
Now get to fixin’ I’m desperate

Obsessed and conniving with a plash guile touch
When did she get so vigilant with her fussbudget qualities?

OH babygirl you’re to much!
Stop wanting things you cant have, and don’t force someone to Love.
You fell for him big deal, doesn’t mean it was meant to be.
Don’t let this one guy devastate you
It’s your love and you can still give it out freely.

Lets not add another person with their heart locked down
’cause of a few let downs
All casually swimming in that
Pool of “I don’t believe in true love” crowd
They go around shut off from the world
Refusing life’s love passion pearls

Instead accept the ones who loves you now
More love will come your way, quit searching for a when,where & how
Let nature take it’s course and follow it
Restrict not your love just the need for it to always be accepted

Prince charming will be here to scoop up his queen
In the meantime enjoy having just yourself, figure out what life’s got to offer
Its right at your fingertips nearly bursting at the seams.
Forth from the dust and din,
The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,
The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,
The wrangle and jangle of unrests,
Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win--
As from swart August to the green lap of May--
To quietness and the fresh and fragrant *******
Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware
In any of her innumerable nests
Of that first sudden plash of dawn,
Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,
Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day
In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn
Forward and up, in wider and wider way,
Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,
On this our lith of the World, as round it roars
And spins into the outlook of the Sun
(The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge),
With light, with living light, from marge to marge
Until the course He set and staked be run.

Through street and square, through square and street,
Each with his home-grown quality of dark
And violated silence, loud and fleet,
Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp,
The hansom wheels and plunges.  Hark, O, hark,
Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain
Ring back a rough refrain
Upon the marked and cheerful *****
Of her four shoes!  Here is the Park,
And O, the languid midsummer wafts adust,
The tired midsummer blooms!
O, the mysterious distances, the glooms
Romantic, the august
And solemn shapes!  At night this City of Trees
Turns to a tryst of vague and strange
And monstrous Majesties,
Let loose from some dim underworld to range
These terrene vistas till their twilight sets:
When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand
Beggared and common, plain to all the land
For stooks of leaves!  And lo! the Wizard Hour,
His silent, shining sorcery winged with power!
Still, still the streets, between their carcanets
Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep.
But see how gable ends and parapets
In gradual beauty and significance
Emerge!  And did you hear
That little twitter-and-cheep,
Breaking inordinately loud and clear
On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere?
'Tis a first nest at matins!  And behold
A rakehell cat--how furtive and acold!
A spent witch homing from some infamous dance--
Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade
Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade!
And now! a little wind and shy,
The smell of ships (that earnest of romance),
A sense of space and water, and thereby
A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky,
And look, O, look! a tangle of silver gleams
And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams,
His dreams that never save in our deaths can die.

What miracle is happening in the air,
Charging the very texture of the gray
With something luminous and rare?
The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire,
And, as one lights a candle, it is day.
The extinguisher, that perks it like a spire
On the little formal church, is not yet green
Across the water:  but the house-tops nigher,
The corner-lines, the chimneys--look how clean,
How new, how naked!  See the batch of boats,
Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!
And those are barges that were goblin floats,
Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!
And in the piles the water frolics clear,
The ripples into loose rings wander and flee,
And we--we can behold that could but hear
The ancient River singing as he goes,
New-mailed in morning, to the ancient Sea.
The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass:
The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake,
And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take
His hobnailed way to work!

Let us too pass--
Pass ere the sun leaps and your shadow shows--
Through these long, blindfold rows
Of casements staring blind to right and left,
Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece
Of life in death's own likeness--Life bereft
Of living looks as by the Great Release--
Pass to an exquisite night's more exquisite close!

Reach upon reach of burial--so they feel,
These colonies of dreams!  And as we steal
Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze,
Fitfully frolicking to heel
With news of dawn-drenched woods and tumbling seas,
We might--thus awed, thus lonely that we are--
Be wandering some dispeopled star,
Some world of memories and unbroken graves,
So broods the abounding Silence near and far:
Till even your footfall craves
Forgiveness of the majesty it braves.
Destiny Hicks Nov 2010
He awoke at four that morning with the sunrise.
"Time to go, babe, get ready," he said with a smile,
Thinking I had been asleep, unaware
I lied awake all night, waiting anxiously.
I wondered if he thought it rather strange,
His little girl wanted to deep-sea fish.

He hand-made ham sandwiches with cheddar cheese--
(Because he knows that cheddar is my favorite)--
And then forced me to take some dramamine.
"It keeps you from puking your lunch," he teased.
I didn't fuss at him for giving me the **** pills.
I was ready to catch my first Atlantic shark.

Florida's early mornings aren't that warm,
So he gave me his old jean jacket as we drove south.
The dock was full of average sailor types--
Our captain's name was Anderson, I think.
Anderson looked just like his boat too,
Weathered by the wicked waves of the ocean.

The boat would swerve and I would sway so awkwardly,
Unbalanced like a newborn giraffe.
Dad gripped my shaking shoulders and whooped,
"This one's gonna be a beauty, you can mark my words!"
I snatched, tugged, and reeled violently--!
The beast finally surfaced with the tiniest plash.

She wiggled on the hook, to my mild astonishment,
Slippery, slime-covered, and small in size.
"It's a white snapper!" Anderson boomed.
She was sixteen inches and diamond white,
Glistening in the sun like the greatest treasure.
Dad patted me on the back, chest swollen with pride.

Catching Atlantic sharks didn't matter now.
Thought about making this prose, but tried it out as a poem instead.
harlon rivers Nov 2018
Remains of the summer
sunlight drip out,
entomb'd in raindrops
from the prevailing
gray beclouded skies
Memories of joy
bathed in sunlight
unravel like a wind
frayed kite dancing
above a day at the beach

Soaring seagulls ponder
all thousand feet of kite string
tied to a hidden bliss below —
hurtling through
the shapeless heavens
tethered to refreshed
dreams still lingering
within an untamed
child of the wind

Morning falls
from  the  trees
in whispers
of golden sorrow
The damp chilled air
smells fresh as the traces
of heaven's cleansing rain —
befallen drop  by  drop,
each plash counted
from an angel weeping,
splattering the broken silence
all  through the night.

An inflamed montage
of leaves surrender
all this unholdable lifeline
we  ever  know;
blanketing the fields
of  autumn's tawny  grass —
Sowing a mosaic colored
reclamation  reposed
atop a nascent green,
soon enrobed by impending
winter’s pallid slumbering hues

The darkening hush
imbues a shadowing
fugitive peacefulness
bathed in wind river eddies
of autumn’s blessing rains

harlon rivers
November 3, 2018

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not;
and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad."
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Maggie Emmett Sep 2016
He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock’s eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the hidden sun
Which glows within each fiery core
And waits to be made free once more.
Their sharp and glistening edges cut
His stiffened fingers. Through the ****
Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.
Wet through and shivering he kneels
And digs the slippery coals; like eels
They slide about. His force all spent,
He counts his small accomplishment.
A half-a-dozen clinker-coals
Which still have fire in their souls.
Fire! And in his thought there burns
The topaz fire of votive urns.
He sees it fling from hill to hill,
And still consumed, is burning still.
Higher and higher leaps the flame,
The smoke an ever-shifting frame.
He sees a Spanish Castle old,
With silver steps and paths of gold.
From myrtle bowers comes the plash
Of fountains, and the emerald flash
Of parrots in the orange trees,
Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.
He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke
Bears visions, that his master-stroke
Is out of dirt and misery
To light the fire of poesy.
He sees the glory, yet he knows
That others cannot see his shows.
To them his smoke is sightless, black,
His votive vessels but a pack
Of old discarded shards, his fire
A peddler’s; still to him the pyre
Is incensed, an enduring goal!
He sighs and grubs another coal.
“The Coal Picker” was published in Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914).
The brook at the end of the garden
Would gurgle and gush through the weeds,
Would ripple and plash in the morning sun
Like a spirit with spiritual needs,
I’d play as a child with my paper boats
As they twisted and twirled on the stream,
Not knowing the danger my sister faced
As she paddled barefoot in a dream.

For under the water and in the weeds
Was the face of a Grindylow,
He’d stare long up at my sister’s legs
From his weedbed, down below,
I should have known and I should have warned
If I’d known he lay down there,
Ruling the brook from his silver throne
But I didn’t, I declare.

I didn’t then, till I saw one day
His face in the willow shade,
Reflected up on the water course
Like a shadow God had made,
He wore a sinister smile that turned
The edge of his mouth to scorn,
And eyes that pierced as Deirdre passed
Her legs quite bare at the dawn.

I said, ‘You walked by the river god
And he stared right up your skirt,’
But Deirdre frowned, stared at the ground
I thought that she must feel hurt.
She kept on paddling in the brook
Walked out by the willow tree,
And two long arms then pulled her down
Rose out of the brook, by me.

I hadn’t the time to scream or cry
Her hair went into the brook,
Quick as a wink, she made no sound
I dashed to the tree to look,
And though the water was inches deep
Its depth had taken the girl,
Down through the weeds where the Dryads weep
With the water starting to whirl.

The brook still bubbles and gurgles there
Will ripple and plash in the weeds,
But I won’t go where I know below
My sister lies in the reeds,
She must have married the Grindylow
For she never came back to see,
If I was there in the morning air,
If anything happened to me?

David Lewis Paget
Martin Narrod Feb 2014
Hours. Back. Tideless extreme. Gaunt. Happy face, good luck, forever ago. A go-go. Breakfast. Preference. Slip stream mock tidal bliss. Humpback seal stardom, infinite provocative immortal. Catches me. In between the teeth. Cool, Mach 3. Sumptuous extravagant human meat, flesh game. The flesh game. Heroes air-freight. Wash cloth. Hot breaths. 'ths' and plastic bag I-280 North ***** and sudatorium.

Pick a pepper.
Cow Palace.
Moth ***** and mouth *****.
Tea bags and sore throats.
Presumptuous candid                                            story-telling anomalies, trite

/masterful caustic limping brick-pedaling life-goers in major metropolis wearing leather sandals, whistling\

Whistling deep cavernous chasm bellowing hollowing, in out in out arithmetic.
        
                                                                                        Sand gathers boulders.

Women gather warmer wethers. The weathered. That ton. One of the asinine                                        

                                                        and aesthete.

Curious. Before
clause. The story god.
                                                        The kick of Achilles

                 and the Satan prance. Bleat of the squeeze.
                                        Course set. Picking up the pieces and going spelunking. French maid syndrome. Wan. Wielding the anatomical dollar of the "this-just-didn't-work" childhood.

                                                                                                Wears gloves. Has colds.

Breaks molds, and reads fortune cookies.

Limps                            lifeless, heavy as a Tuesday and digging its own grave. It owns gray. It

makes
meals
and carries them through broken towns,
over smoky ridges,
helping out and just- helping.

The line wakes it.                                        One traffic light.   Three thousand three hundred lakes.

Steals a cell phone. Goes quiet for days in the forest.

Kills a wild pig. Bares a feral hog.

Opens up a can of sour condensed milk and still makes caramels. The open fire. The children gasping and favoring the brave. The score is limitless.



Hours go by.

                                                        ...    ­                                      ...

                      ­                    ...

                                        ­                                            ...

Mites dig into the skins, and the shins of the subtle. The men come back. The palm fronds make excellent roofs. Raised. Reared. Canned food makes abhorrent constipation forest dwelling; syndrome. And excrement. The crowns carry over.

The bejeweled mid-rim equator

                                                               ­                                                 providence.


Ki­ng and queen.
Prince and princess. Knees bend and over and over. Mirthy trammeled lots. Egg white clouds scurry through towns scurrying through. The bastion wall. A romance connecting. Two lovers. The lot. A burrow in the ground. Short-haired hares: run, jump, skip. Life settles. No one comes back. The skin starts to itch. Gratitude is and is not. Worry steps in. The chimes glow through the rorschach tree tops. Fires and combustion. Great oversized bells. Who hears the ringing?

The canopy overcome with splinters, the eyebrows are furnaces that never spit out the light.

Spectacular plight. Unbelievable nights. Feeling fowl in the palms of another                                                        
                                                                        land where weirs and wilds
and roaring waterfalls
                                                decorated with cowards collecting honey
                                                                                                              combs
through hair-strainers, so brave    soo brave, to brave, to hunter-gatherer
African mission-syndrome types in white long coats and sometimes and dangerously called doctors. Do not stop for lines. Do not stop for lions. Or

                        when stuck in the cauldron of the c t a         & cia

do not weave heavily through traffic, railing divorce into the cellular phone of man        . NO ZHE DOES NOT. NO.

No one eats, anymore.
The pleasure is moved.
The happy have landed.
The girl of my dreams is foretelling, foretold. She climbs into a lunchbox and heads to work. She digs her nails into her skirt and chimes for dinner.

All is sentimental and elementary. No one is everyone. There is something human in the air.

Something cumin in the water. I love in French in English. In Germanic.

I'm in the water. Feet stuck in the mud. Hands flailing, I'm naked contemplating making shark moves, one hand flat-out, vertical, putting on a show for ducks and swallows.

The women return. The girls come back. Catastrophe and the merriment of the seven deadly fellows.

I run around Sue
and move back.                         I come to the coast to see what's the matter. It's blue. A cinder blanketed snow home. An igloo. An ice tale of curiosity, of  

                two cities, twisted cities. Mad dragons and weirder wizards that rear silver and portage the weirs of Elk Grove, thru the elk homes
humming bizarre cantatas, making Raspberry jellish and relishing

inthelast
lightsofthemorning

of an

interruption. The wanton exercise. The carnivorous machismo.
We work out with our quirks out and lead with the flaws. A tailored finite saw. A ringing through the air. Who can hear the ringing?                

Makes the men to swine, to mew muses. And get choosy on cabooses while

saving Moose.

                                                  maybe like Salvatore Dali would have done

He would halve none of it and brim over with it all.
Make cape flight from coastal waters. Riding the thermal winds of

North Africa, Tomato, and Japan;                              

BEARDEDfrogOFprinceGENEALOGYneededTOO     ...  ...  ... ....  .. . . ... ..

To sew buttons. To bring the water from the well. The shrimp from the levy. We all go to war on Sundays. We hate on Tuesdays,





but the women never come with the water.


                         [now you're supposed to ask if they keep it for themselves]

sad-leis         'end nose.'

I can't but we can. You don't and I hate you for it.

I smell you on socks

                                                          ­                          .On pillowcases and bullet casings. I'm hot and hard to handle. I lay down in front of forklifts trying to bulldoze shopping malls. I am too and too sentimental. I have a 25¢ ring from a vending machine. I love it. I love you. I go to the bottom room. Blue carpet. **** carpet. Tilted blinds. I find the moors and the heaven. I put my books and a sweater in a sack and I start moving. No ones ever seen me move like this. It's like I had revolution for breakfast. I sip a small glass of orange juice. Orange colored juice. I'm off like a stereo and walking through and through up into a story. I'm making life easy with my purple crayon. I draw a canyon and a boat too. The boat can't float so I draw myself an ocean, a coastline. I call out for my friends and no one is there, so I draw friends. I draw the seashore, the plateau. I make other ships. I shift in my seat, it's uncomfortable so I make it leather. I write a letter but it flies away with a pigeon. I'm stuck on a peninsula, crying. On the front step of a friend's tenement and I'm sobbing. I'm waiting for the waif and she's not coming. I think her over with coffee all alone in a diner, and eventually I have to leave. I trail like an autumn sun, splashing bits of earth with my tepid light. I plash in the sea and still I'm very alone. I run my fingers through my hair and find a find a crown to make myself king. I'm heir to my own home, but it's not good enough. It never was. I grow curiouser and curiouser. I don't know what to do, I'm without. I'm without use. Eight months on top of six years, on top of the second floor of a third floor building, it's hot, and I'm locked out, I'm fighting off weakness and indecision. I'm starving and I haven't eaten in days. I'm confused and the ******* seems the rite. I've got no one to call and I start swimming. I start swimming in circles. I get verbal. I start crawling and drawling and soon I'm weeping in a brutal drawl. And I can't hear you. And all I have is the coastline and the ocean, a plateau,

a yacht club full of empty vessels. A flotilla of friends but there's


eh                                                            ­                        eve             nobody home.

And I see you. I meet you. I mean to meet you. But I can't. I can't move or be moved. I can't speak or be made to speak. I am gripped by your love and yet wrapped in fear. In the rapture of fear. Its rancor grips me. So I stand up. I'm halved and naked and half naked. In the sea. And I see you.

And I seem you, to me. I seam you to me.
betterdays Mar 2014
i stroke the water
with amphibian grace....
plastic protuberent eyes
bob up above....
then down below
.....disecting view
sky blue../...to aqualine
aquamarine.. black line

water sluicing off...
latex bundled, bumpled head
in streaming rivulets...
legs creating rhythmic geometrics....
arms parting waters to glide.........

my frogskinned self.....
is irregularly pattern
....dead fish white,
and sunkissed brown,
......on appendages
bright cerulean, slashed
with swirled  butter yellow.
.....wrapped across the
overotound body...

glide onward frog girl...
....through...
the crisp chlorine clean pond...
thoughtless.... except for stroke
and lapnumber.

we.... the army of lapsswimmer
frogs.... are a silent breed
our territorial sound/call is the
regulated plash of arm or leg
.....against surface water

as we swim....always....
in straight lines.....
......that etch away miles....
and
...our overindulgent..
land based......
...vices

we are the water monks .....
of penance and self improvement
....grimly discharging our vespered canon of strokes....
before fluidly lifting our... watersilked
bodies back onto the reality
of land ......leaving
our amphibian grace
                        ........adrift
....in the wake of daily need
A skin leap


A time snails back
A façade or a glitch in a memento of my fingers
A circular dry pinned gaze
Lanes henpecked the nostrils bays
A sweaty pave walk with hasten mood and broken cups which could happen rapidly
A silverine .!!
If I try utilize a claws to grasp a thoughts
A twinkle plash bullying my visage as a vertigo stalk the choke cubicles
I watch the anti hero stop barred the curfew and mingles coat
All over my body .
Can I smoke a breath please
K G Jan 2017
Possessed
Warring within the wind
Aped by a flush, you unveil a plash
Flaunting us a stygian, hazy gore
Left weaving a susurrus blether
With shards prodding your throat
KG
Phosphorimental Dec 2014
Nourished by love
for the unseen within,
when seen with a heart,
Shimmers, sans end.

Swells the bud
a flame before bloom,
sans thorn, sans pain
sans sojourner's wound.

The wilting, the dying,
the falling to earth,
the paradox wrapped
in a gift of re-birth.

In death so many
nod in decay
who’s hues loved light
until light loved gray.

Deep hearted thinker
Let loose the reigns
To careen through
redolent gardens again.

Moments pause
on a fragranced path
you’ll hear a subtle
message plash…

twas a tear
of Mercury’s reflection,
spake, “whence you came,
is where you go,
take heed; all roads,
but One direction.”
Martin Narrod Apr 2017
Hours. Back. Tideless extreme. Gaunt. Happy face, good luck, forever ago. A go-go. Breakfast. Preference. Slip stream mock tidal bliss. Humpback seal stardom, infinite provocative immortal. Catches me. In between the teeth. Cool, Mach 3. Sumptuous extravagant human meat, flesh game. The flesh game. Heroes air-freight. Wash cloth. Hot breaths. 'ths' and plastic bag I-280 North ***** and sudatorium. Pick a pepper. Cow Palace. Moth ***** and mouth *****. Tea bags and sore throats. Presumptuous candid story-telling anomalies, trite masterful caustic limping brick-pedaling life-goers in major metropolis wearing leather sandals, whistling. Whistling deep cavernous chasm bellowing hollowing, in out in out arithmetic. Sand gathers boulders. Women gather warmer wethers. The weathered. That ton. One of the asinine and aesthete. Curious. Before clause. The story god. The kick to the Achilles and the Satan prance. Bleat of the squeeze. Course set. Picking up the pieces and going spelunking. French maid syndrome. Wan. Wielding the anatomical dollar of the "this-just-didn't-work" childhood. Wears gloves. Has colds. Breaks molds, and reads fortune cookies. Limps lifeless, heavy as a Tuesday and digging its own grave. It owns gray. It makes meals and carries them through broken towns, over smokey ridges, helping out and just- helping.

The line wakes it. One traffic light. Three thousand three hundred lakes. Steals a cell phone. Goes quiet for days in the forest. Kills a wild pig. Bares a feral hog. Opens up a can of sour condensed milk and still makes caramels. The open fire. The children gasping and favoring the brave. The score is limitless. Hours go by. Mites dig into the skins, and the shins of the subtle. The men come back. The palm fronds make excellent roofs. Raised. Reared. Canned food makes abhorrent constipation forest dwelling; syndrome. And excrement. The crowns carry over. The bejeweled mid-rim equator providence. King and queen. Prince and princess. Knees bend and over and over. Mirthy trammeled lots. Egg white clouds scurry through towns scurrying through. The bastion wall. A romance connecting. Two lovers. The lot. A burrow in the ground. Short-haired hares: run, jump, skip. Life settles. No one comes back. The skin starts to itch. Gratitude is and is not. Worry steps in. The chimes glow through the rorschach tree tops. Fires and combustion. Great oversized bells. Who hears the ringing? The canopy overcome with splinters, the eyebrows are furnaces that never spit out the light.

No one eats, anymore. The pleasure is moved. The happy have landed. The girl of my dreams is foretelling, foretold. She climbs into a lunchbox and heads to work. She digs her nails into her skirt and chimes for dinner. All is sentimental and elementary. No one is everyone. There is something human in the air. Something cumin in the water. I love in French. In English. In Germanic. I'm in the water. Feet stuck in the mud. Hands flailing, I'm naked contemplating making shark moves, one hand flat-out, vertical, putting on a show for ducks and swallows. The women return. The girls come back. Catastrophe and the merriment of the seven deadly fellows. I run around and move back. I come to the coast to see what's the matter. It's blue. A neige built snow home. An igloo. A tale of curiosity, of interruption. The wanton exercise. The carnivorous machismo. We work out with our quirks out and lead with the flaws. A tailored finite saw. A ringing through the air. Who can hear the ringing? Makes the men to swine, to amuse muses. To sew buttons. To bring the water from the well. The shrimp from the levy. We all go to war on Sundays. We hate on Tuesdays but the women never come with the water.-

I can't but we can. You don't and I hate you for it. I smell you on socks. On pillowcases and bullet casings. I'm hot and hard to handle. I lay down in front of forklifts trying to bulldoze shopping malls. I am too and too sentimental. I have a 25¢ ring from a vending machine. I love it. I love you. I go to the bottom room. Blue carpet. **** carpet. Tilted blinds. I find the moors and the heaven. I put my books and a sweater in a sack and I start moving. The none-ones ever seen me move like this. It's like I had revolution for breakfast. I sip a small glass of orange juice. Orange colored juice. I'm off like a stereo and walking through and through up into a story. I'm making life easy with my purple crayon. I draw a canyon and a boat too. The boat can't float so I draw myself an ocean, a coastline. I call out for my friends and no one is there, so I draw friends. I draw the seashore, the plateau. I make other ships. I shift in my seat, it's uncomfortable so I make it leather. I write a letter but it flies away with a pigeon. I'm stuck on a peninsula, crying. On the front step of a friend's tenement and I'm sobbing. I'm waiting for the waif and she's not coming. I think her over with coffee all alone in a diner, and eventually I have to leave. I trail like an autumn sun, splashing bits of earth with my tepid light. I plash in the sea and still I'm very alone. I run my fingers through my hair and find a find a crown to make myself king. I'm heir to my own home, but it's not good enough. It never was. I grow curiouser and curiouser. I don't know what to do, I'm without. I'm without use. Eight months on top of six years, on top of the second floor of a third floor building, it's hot, and I'm locked out, I'm fighting off weakness and indecision. I'm starving and I haven't eaten in days. I'm confused and the ******* seems the rite. I've got no one to call and I start swimming. I start swimming in circles. I get verbal. I start crawling and drawaling and soon I'm weeping in a brutal drawl. And I can't hear you. And all I have is the coastline and the ocean, a plateau, a yacht club full of empty vessels. A flotilla of friends but there's nobody home. And I see you. I meet you. I mean to meet you. But I can't. I can't move or be moved. I can't speak or be made to speak. I am gripped by your love and yet wrapped in fear. In the rapture of fear. Its rancor grips me. So I stand up. I'm halved and naked and half naked. In the sea. And I see you. And I seam you, to me. I seam you to me.
seams inseam truth visionary vision yelp thought pattern circle square heart heartache days day life loss live living poet poetry he him man men write writing streamofconsciousness and you me I it eight month months year years find crowns crown crowned ocean oceans water pacific floored coastline brutal navy earth domes curios curiosity help helpless helplessness hope hopeless hopelessness fighting fight hurt hurting hurtful autumn sun planets moon hate hateful pillows pillow love luck lust **** ******* drugs drug drugging during whirl whirling whirring scared fear fearing godfearing god-fearing hollow hollowing spoiled spoil godless wealth rich but **** can can't naked **** muscle mussels oysters clams sea seashores seashore
born two days
after ole Punxsutawney i.e. the Doctor Phil -
of woodchucks Latin Name = Marmota Monax
nest resembled Rastafarian hair weave,
which creature rattled with ire and peeveishness,

when rudely roused from his abode February fourth
two thousand nine hundred and ninety nine
just two days after said groundhog got prodded to predict,
what surprises old man winter would deliver
from his snowy white sleeve
then juiced when he tried tug *** cozy once again,
an ear piercing cry rent quiet  
his pseudo Redmond Proficiency Academy den.

Wails via this tearful papa surpassed
decibel deemed tolerated,
hence entire webbed threshold did reverb
and rebound and he could not
muffle ears to block out sound,
nor would said creature trust
his beady eyes, how metamorphosis
doth confoundingly, blindingly, and astoundingly
transformed alien (perfect E.T. Stand in) appearing
gangly infant into a stunning - materiel
sans as fashionably attired
home coming queen crowned soon
to be freshly minted high school senior,
and perhaps college bound.

Seventeen plus years ago (soon be nineteen years -
she skipped to my lou eighteen), elapsed in a flash,
as a newborn mandated to exit
womb er full world uterine she
did plash ordained by Mother Nature
decreed must wriggle and leave placental stash
without (of course) leaving a mass of trash.
Thus, exit from birth canal complemented
second and last daughter to the Harris mix
whereby, she communicated
via clucks just for kicks
starting to gabble sounds vocalizing -
sounds of cow bell licks
influenced by Donald Duck
and Leif Erics son, also enlisting
literary feedback from Barack Obama,
and his lovely brood of Dixie chic chicks
attired in his wall den uniform bespeaking
his pointed skill teaching pre-presidential days
within ivied bricks primal utterances she acquired
(courtesy of Alice Cooper)
Retained like toys in attics.

Like any buck minister fully taken aback
this mister mom did fuss and fawn
from one jimmy crack corn to the next rhyme,
which captive infant audience gave no flack,
precious heir from ***** papa did help spawn -

an everyday ******* Jack of all trades
whereat n'er tiring as child rearing
more challenging than untying Gordian knot
without lack king and how, The Idler Wheel
Is Wiser than the Driver of the *****

and Whipping Cords Will Serve You
More than Ropes Will Ever Do to pack
a Judy ish us punch, though thee Punim
born with adroit skill to quack
mimicking gripped banshees,
denizens frenziedly shrieking
out the box of Pandora - as if one felt a whack
and a wallop, nonetheless infant younger daughter

a boon against strife
wool worth effort and propensity
to revel qua biological miracle re: said offspring
did inadvertently teach me lessons of life

to cherish and savor each giggle, laughter and smile
amidst cramped apartment plus feeling
discombobulated frustration bubbling rife
introducing yours truly
to tha hen pecked moody blue wife.

pockmarks can vouchsafe this un beak able trait
from spouse, who need not be lambasted
on account of increased weight.

Like a human bobbing sponge youngest progeny
absorbed auditory/ visual multitude
within each axon and neuron of that infantile sensory
“sir” kit board aware at a tender young age
how she struggled to string words together
to convey a mood
predilection with language impediment
possibly passed thru umbilical rip cord.
No idea thru combination of genetics and biology
that burnished beautiful lass oof an offspring
wrought a smart girl, an apple of the eye
per this father who never thought
thru attempts at conception sought

supremely melded genes, he thought
loves labors last, t’would come
to naught delivered us an artistic,
intrinsic, linguistic lass
who for no price can be bought
though someday, a young lad will take a fancy

(as ought to be the path of biology)
and hoop fully brings ye happiness
for your remaining lifetime
with a numeral
(following a number from one to nine)
with many an aught!

TOO LOVE YOU MY DEAR SHANA -
MORE THAN THIS SHABBY POEM
CAN CONVEY, WHICH...
UPON ATTEMPTING TO UNDERSTAND -
ABOVE GIBBERISH JA PROBABLY
WILL PROBABLY RAISE ARMS UP
IN DESPAIR UTTERING OYE VAY!
hannah Sep 2017
Fall bloom, summer falling eld.
The crisp kiss of a pleading farewell.

The first hello of a cantaloupe dream.
Fading leaves; shedding its skin.

The kids in trunks,
hands tied together, a vowed bond to last a lifetime.

Jumping into the forbidden lake;
A hurried plash from wet, parading feet.

Flaxen, cold skin,
A gaze to the wuthering sky’s of storms.

Shy smiles, first kisses.

Fall,
She lives a Dive in our dreams.
"Dive" in this case, is referring to a rich man. I hope I don't confuse anyone with that.
Daniel Jul 2020
On the surface of a glossy table,
sits a set of coffee rings.
Faded stains which incorporate
themselves to the table cling.

The brown bean’s bitter bite
Recounts an hour of pure delight.
Through site and mind has the taste transpired
to a longing time of invoking fire,
and shuttered blinds, and abating attire.
A cluttered mind that never tired.
As the grip acquit the coffee cup’s handle,
a stain pertained, on the mantle.

On the surface of a coffee table,
sits a broken glass of wine
Scattered shards across the hearth
now rest among the pine.
As drink dripped down the table leg,
memories clamped like a stubborn peg.
Delicate feelings that once were bottled
now freely flow, like the wine that toppled.
And made a plash upon the floor-
A drunken crash, a heavy pour.
All the wine- now gone to waste,
With no divine aftertaste.

On the surface of a broken table,
sits a series of regrets.
A shattered heart with sunken scars.
A drunken insomniac.
J Lobo Apr 2022
Letters on the parchment
Some sweet to read,
Others breeding misery

Letters written with passion
Some with love abound
Scorn others carry

Letters in the box
Waiting their carrier
Ink waiting to scream.

Letters laid waste
One tumble scattered
A plash staking claim

Letters lay there bleeding
Unread by the reader
Their designs lost, Incomplete.
Bijoylakshmi Das Dec 2019
THE WONDERLUST(48)
(Bijoylakshmi Das)
The world is far away from me with azure touch of the sky,
No earthly turmoil, but amazing splendour far and nigh,
The beauty of the timeless Vast, the Green humming with Delight,
To that remote realm I want to soar in my amorous flight.

The plash of the fountains, the soothing murmur in the brook,
The close-clinging touch of Love's sweet lips and the bashful look,
Are ever vibrant in air around robed in aureate hue,.
The glad smile of the cherished eyes to begin the life anew.

The Heaven's surprise in the spilth of an ecstatic beatitude,
Makes me more mirthful in life's wonderlust solitude,
Longings turn insentient in an eternal Elysian clasp,
The Soul seeks release from the mundane transient grasp.

The heartbeats cease overjoyed with Bliss infinite,
The seventh heaven opens doors of rapture recondite,
The gladdening glamour of the glistening stars of the moonlit mirth,
The vain loiterer finds his aimless errand's Goal at last.

The fragrant opulence brought by the babbling breeze,
All rivers' routes of the ravenous journey in the Ocean cease,
The truant spirit seeks sojourn in an ascetic heart,
Desires die the death in the deathless Vast.

The lisping lips of love speak soft whisper sublime
The sylvan woodlands are sun-clad in an argent rhyme,
The radiant blossoms are bathed in the brightening mirth,
To welcome the newly-weds in the ****** vernal birth.

The Absolute sits alone, immobile in the Immortal firmament above,
To greet the new-borns in the greatness of His immaculate Love.
(Bijoylakshmi Das, Anand Utsav Ashram Haridwar. 13th October 2019)
Dave Robertson Mar 2020
An April fool
run to ground by a bug,
limited to roam a little upstairs,
a little down

I have consumed my body weight
in ones and zeroes,
which is no mean feat

I’ve streamed series,
beaten end of level bosses,
gone back and got mired
in the reeds
of the long reads

This feast,
long anticipated,
has not tasted as planned
and my multimedia catch up
leaves me wanting

When the time comes
I will cut and run
and plash my legs
in the sea to my knees

and I will not capture the moment
with an eye and thought
other than my own

— The End —