"ploughed" poems
*In memory of, and with respect to the victims of the 2011 terrorist acts in Norway.
As the weather resembles, one remembers...*
Perhaps if you went to my school,
You'd have gotten beaten up for your egocentricity
Long before it grew to such deranged preportions.
As misplaced as the runes you carved into Glock and rifle;
You'd have been not only estranged, but broken.
Disarmed decades before detonation.
Alas. A distorted berserker you ploughed through
Establishments and hearts; an armed teenager fuelled on
Video games, soft candy and steroids.
Pity the nation that nurses such an unpoetic national enemy.
We forgot your name and face, as you never knew ours.
The symbol we chose was an ocean of roses,
Like torches held to our love unharmed.
Norwegian leap year two-thousand-eleven;
Only twenty-two days in July.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 4:25 PM UTC
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled,
That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust,
But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust.
If we who sight along it round the world,
See nothing worthy to have been its mark,
It is because like men we look too near,
Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere,
Our missiles always make too short an arc.
They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect
The curve of earth, and striking, break their own;
They make us cringe for metal-point on stone.
But this we know, the obstacle that checked
And tripped the body, shot the spirit on
Further than target ever showed or shone.
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A reticent fox slinks by beneath
the trees
that still have leaves
conversing for now
the change in colors
sleeps still, unannounced
the rain smells of ploughed earth
& freshly hung-out clouds
& wellington boots
Autumn's child cries it's first word
& inside a low-lit pub
a crisp old cider's poured
September's dreams
fermenting
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 3:20 PM UTC
September's ploughed earth
sows the rains
it is something like D.H Lawrence's
' The Rainbow',
that you love
the Polish cleaning lady so
my Soul's countryman,
dear poet of the North
for now, Persephone still
walks the earth
fair Kore, soon to descend
to the underworld
back to an aged God in love
were I thus loved by a man
as to become his queen
as to be kidnapped by him
instead, all I have is you,
a woman's love unrequited
for a boy & growing stale
as far off winter calls
like a theatre scene
too much rehearsed
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 9:24 PM UTC
Trapped in a ***** world
a world of old gold.
Wrinkled creases
needing ironing
on faces of the old.
Arms caked in drawings
of roses and steel
Scorched fields
ploughed to death
in lines on rusty old farms.
Clenched and clasped
Tight collars at the throat
Fat bellies in laps
Buckles on horses
Belts on chaps
Held tight in a vice
Braces on women
with feet in straps
Buckles and braces
laces and *****
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 8:11 AM UTC
In the barren bowl
Of the local park
There is more brown
Than green
And naked trees
Rest like tired moths
Upon grass
That has been lacerated
By studded shoes
And knees and toes
And elbows
That have ploughed it
Bare.
The edges of the path
Look like eyebrows
Scant
Poorly plucked
And rats-tail
Mongrels
Scatter and shred
Across the carpet
Sodden
Sinewy.
Jarring teenage love
Letters
Sit upon February
The fourteenth
Like it is a mantelpiece of
Glass
Tip blue hair to grey sky
Beiged fingers
Intertwine
Black fingernails
Fumble
They watch their childhood haunts
Through the frosted panes
Of spectacle windows
And wonder why
Nostalgia dies so bitter
Today.
*Kiss my empty skin
Waiting.*
I find myself a love affair
In the sky
Clouds form a coastline
A single dribble of peach
Taints the ash
Like careless words
And I tilt my chin towards it
Already the spindle of my mind
Turns
And begins to weave
Gold from straw.
Feb 14, 2015
Feb 14, 2015 at 1:09 PM UTC
I am a landscape of hills and valleys
and some jagged edges where
the world stops.
I have clean springs and caverns
on my face and
small peninsulas that sense
and feel on my hands.
I have changed this landscape
and ploughed it to find
the red soil that lies underneath
the pale surface.
And the people have told me
it is destroyed.
But from there inside the pain
grows a garden
and a planet continues
living.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 6:42 PM UTC
Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly
And heard sweet notes of sylvan music blown
From antique reeds to common folk unknown:
And often launched our bark upon that sea
Which the nine Muses hold in empery,
And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam,
Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home
Till we had freighted well our argosy.
Of which despoiled treasures these remain,
Sordello’s passion, and the honeyed line
Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine
Driving his pampered jades, and more than these,
The seven-fold vision of the Florentine,
And grave-browed Milton’s solemn harmonies.
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My soul is a dark ploughed field
In the cold rain;
My soul is a broken field
Ploughed by pain.
Where grass and bending flowers
Were growing,
The field lies broken now
For another sowing.
Great Sower when you tread
My field again,
Scatter the furrows there
With better grain.
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Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of a Transcendental World
With Deliverance and Freedom
Under a Sky of Neon Pearls,
Where the Populace are Former Loves
All Gathered in the Clouds
And Lend an Ear, for Bygone Cheer
So Memoirs can be Ploughed.
Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of Archaic Silver Screen
Parading Lavish Garments
And Conversing with James Dean,
Where Bowler Hats are Stock Attire
And Pea-coats Line the Hall
And Champagne Flutes, Say 'Fill your Boots'
To an Infinite Curtain Call.
Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of a Ride on the Good Ship Hope
With Secret Codes and Yellow-bricked Roads
And ***** with the Pope,
Where Lotus-eaters Man The Decks
And White Rabbits Scale the Mast
We'll Sail Away, On a Tranquil Day
And Pervade the Ocean Vast.
Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of Unblemished Skin and Bone
On a Bed of Fragrant Petals
On which Countless Seeds are Sewn,
Where Laborious Figures Embrace as One
Compelling Magnets to Concede
And Music will, Amuse them 'till
They Repeat the Final Scene.
Life's Better When You're Dreaming
That all the World's a Stage
And that Pair are a Distant Footnote
On the Thirty Thousandth Page,
Where the Cast are Poised in Waiting
And the Finale is About to Start
They Take a Bow, And this Tells Me How
I Came to Play this Part.
December 2010 (Completed April 2011)
Apr 20, 2011
Apr 20, 2011 at 9:18 AM UTC
There were three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
An’ they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.
They took a plough and ploughed him down,
Put clods upon his head;
An’ they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.
But the cheerfu’ spring came kindly on,
And show’rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surprised them all.
The sultry suns of summer came,
And he grew thick and strong;
His head weel armed wi’ pointed spears,
That no one should him wrong.
The sober autumn entered mild,
When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
Showed he began to fail.
His colour sickened more and more,
He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
To show their deadly rage.
They’ve ta’en a weapon long and sharp,
And cut him by the knee;
Then tied him fast upon a cart,
Like a rogue for forgerie.
They laid him down upon his back,
And cudgelled him full sore;
They hung him up before the storm,
And turned him o’er and o’er.
They filled up a darksome pit
With water to the brim;
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
There let him sink or swim.
They laid him out upon the floor,
To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appeared,
They tossed him to and fro.
They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,
The marrow of his bones;
But a miller used him worst of all,
For he crushed him ‘tween two stones.
And they hae ta’en his very heart’s blood,
And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
Their joy did more abound.
John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
Of noble enterprise;
For if you do but taste his blood,
’Twill make your courage rise;
’Twill make a man forget his woe;
’Twill heighten all his joy:
’Twill make the widow’s heart to sing,
Tho’ the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in old Scotland!
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The boat ploughed on. Now Alcatraz was past
And all the grey waves flamed to red again
At the dead sun's last glimmer. Far and vast
The Sausalito lights burned suddenly
In little dots and clumps, as if a pen
Had scrawled vague lines of gold across the hills;
The sky was like a cup some rare wine fills,
And stars came as he watched
-- and he was free
One splendid instant -- back in the great room,
Curled in a chair with all of them beside
And the whole world a rush of happy voices,
With laughter beating in a clamorous tide. . . .
Saw once again the heat of harvest fume
Up to the empty sky in threads like glass,
And ran, and was a part of what rejoices
In thunderous nights of rain; lay in the grass
Sun-baked and tired, looking through a maze
Of tiny stems into a new green world;
Once more knew eves of perfume, days ablaze
With clear, dry heat on the brown, rolling fields;
Shuddered with fearful ecstasy in bed
Over a book of knights and ****** shields . . .
The ship slowed, jarred and stopped. There, straight ahead,
Were dock and fellows. Stumbling, he was whirled
Out and away to meet them -- and his back
Slumped to the old half-cringe, his hands fell slack;
A big boy's arm went round him -- and a twist
Sent shattering pain along his tortured wrist,
As a voice cried, a bloated voice and fat,
"Why it's Miss Nancy! Come along, you rat!"
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Love thou mind love and love
For,love is the binding Will of God.
Dip thy nib in live and gently draw
Draw sweet,sweet scenes around.
Honour blush as Ego's Pride
Upon thy cheeks flash rosy.
Body jerked,hinges shake,Oh! Lord!
As emotional volcanoes erupt lava of anger.
Creator interlace creatues to depend
Hence,repent on,own-made calamities.
Love! give and take as much as you need-
Only that much you need not be greedy.
Lust is rust of love a desert fruit.
Being deserted,I once ran and ran
Searching mirage of human- love
With Tsunamis in eyes 'nd feeble feet.
Love is not selfish lust:
It is candle light for service.
Light:brightening darkened corners
Shows us: all are creatures equal.
As we do violate the Nature's Laws
Laws of Nature will violate ours.
Walls will be demolished,Hills and valleys
Ploughed with thunder and quakes.
Love,thou, mind! love and love
For, Love is the binding Will of God.
Dec 22, 2011
Dec 22, 2011 at 10:47 PM UTC
Freckles make your back a map
Seabirds circle but they lack
Grasp of what youth endures
Vacating summer shores
Carrying their lives to sea.
Mechanically they return
For bright months they did not yearn-
Only their homecoming retells
Of warmth and hope in summer spells
Of ploughed soil, banked country roads
And feathers bent not under loads;
Put-to-side partners reconcile,
Their lives measured in sea miles
Time comfortably slipping away,
Together living easy days
Until they fly on.
Dec 22, 2012
Dec 22, 2012 at 12:47 PM UTC
I ploughed the field
Back and forth,
I was good at it
Till that time,
It hit the stone
I nearly broke it.
Nearly bend it,
The pain It would have caused.
But I carried on,
And the field was ploughed.
Then I slept
As I had finished the job,
The satisfaction
On my face lasted
The night
As I slept sound
All night.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 3:18 AM UTC
© 2011 (Jim Sularz)
I will walk through fields of chrysanthemums,
with giant dragonflies in gloried hues.
In a curved space-time continuum,
I’ll stand in wonder, they’ll peer and zoom.
I will reap, from deep treasures ploughed,
when love’s full measure is weighed in me.
Where far flung coalescing spirit clouds,
conceive their stardust progeny.
With bright candle lights, melt my waxen wings,
rekindle my spirit shadow to set me free.
Then, within my soul, I’ll rejoice and let the Heavens sing,
that it be Earth, I’ve come back to see!
Jun 24, 2012
Jun 24, 2012 at 5:04 PM UTC
A laugh is not a pretense
I wanted to tell you that, Urooj
And maybe to myself too
Because I know you saw peeps
Of the vacancy
Nestled in my skin
And I too was acquainted
With your queer sorrow
That rises and falls
With a schedule of its own
We saw the jolly winds flirt with greyed trees
And heard many a strange talks
In golden fields of youthful wheat
And mustard flowers alive
But we ran too, didn’t we?
I pointed to the slender tree far, far away
Count as I go, I said
And count you did as I rushed
Rushed clumsily on
My feet twisting in troughs
Eye-lashes fighting dust
Twenty, you shouted, as the tree grew
But I barely heard
my body singing a battlefield
You stumbled through the ploughed soil
Hardened through suns
Crushing the remnants of harvested wheat
beneath the flat soles of your sandals
(who wears those to a field?)
Then more
Through soft, chestnut soils
Trying not to damage the baby onions
And I laughed through my burning lungs
A smoke piled up in me
Yearning to gnaw all away
And we licked the gusts singing gossips
Of sour, raw mangoes
Then relished the cool water that
You forced the earth to puke
(I still don’t get how that hand-pump worked)
And I know you sneaked along a wilted rose
From your sister’s grave
And wept, quietly sniffing
Seeing her in all the birds I pointed out
All the leaves dried to immortality
In my notebook
I too treaded through rows of childish guava trees
And struggled to will my ghosts away
I too got stranded in the insolent rays
of the dusty sun
But we joked still, didn’t we?
And when, on the way home,
I reminded you stories
Of the silly children we once lived
Your laugh glimmered all around
And mine mimicked
And the radio was ****
So we swam in our own private silences
Got lost in the rowing birds
And I know, at some point,
All the dead days
And all the rotten mangoes
Seated themselves in the car
Along with us and our shackled beasts
And the villages and the stalls and empty fields
Ran past in silence
But we had laughed
When the restless winds nearly sent me
Tumbling down the tree
And we had laughed when
The freshly-watered soil tried
To **** us under
And a laugh is not a pretense
Urooj, a laugh is not a pretense.
I wonder if we know.
May 13, 2021
May 13, 2021 at 10:55 AM UTC
The end begins,
not with the first stain
of red sputum on a white handkerchief.
Nor by fingers grown numb with
seizure from the heart’s decay.
But, with an act
that leaves a toy discarded
in the nursery of early choice,
reviving for abandoned deeds
the doppel-gangers of dead youths,
clothed with reproach and unfleshed
figments of the mind’s high hopes of
futures fenced in a child’s green field,
that now is hedged; and ploughed,
and grown bitter with a
named and known crop.
© James Rainsford 2010
Dec 4, 2010
Dec 4, 2010 at 12:38 PM UTC
An old man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,
And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing **** I hear the note
Of lark and linnet, and from every page
Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.
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November shakes the wet from
Her wings and stretches them to
Their full reach; tips touching
The death and birth of October
And December,
Feathers the colour of leafless
Trees and ploughed fields.
A thirty day lifespan of deathbed
Lullabies and hardened faces,
Bodies crouching to lay themselves
Upon their own warmth in
Desperation, clouds of breath
Escaping layers of
Cotton and wool.
Winter is as inevetable as dying.
I wander between birches and
Pinetrees like crooked teeth
Protruding from the mist; the
Bones of something decomposed
Between moss and
***** forest water.
Black as old blood.
Brown as mud, air like millions
Of tiny arrows against any bare
Skin.
This landscape could be someone's
Nightmare, some horror movie
Set or a Ted Hughes poem backdrop.
But I stand, still and alone, one
Palm against a rotten tree trunk,
The other upon my Norwegian
Heart. It is a time for looking within
For strength. To be silent and not think,
But feel; a time for building fires.
To gather what's dry, and prepare.
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 3:07 PM UTC
That year they gave Tess
her first typewriter. She’d
not need to borrow her
brother’s battered old piece
or write down her fragile
poems in her spiderlike
scrawl as her father called it.
The promise came while
she was getting her mind
together in that mental
asylum, after the mucky
love affair that went no
place and left her hanging
there, like one crucified
for all to see and most
to softly mutter and stare.
Get yourself mended girl,
Father said, and we’ll buy
you your own typewriter,
so you can stab away on
the keys to your heart’s
content and bring out
those poems of yours.
He never read her poems,
never read much apart
from the back page sport
or gawked at page 3 girls
with a tut tutting tongue.
That year she gazed out
of the wide barred window
of the asylum at the snow
on fields, at the seagulls
gathering and feeding behind
the faraway tractor as it
ploughed, at the grey
depressing sky, wondering
what it’d be like to not be,
wondering what the woman
with a cast in her eye, was
doing to herself in the toilets,
one night when she’d gone
in to *** unable to sleep.
The typewriter idea
and promise kind of got her
through the dark hours and
the ECT, and the following day
headaches and numbness.
After slitting her wrists (mildly,
a cry for help) she said on the
phone to her father, Come get
me out of this place, help me
get back together. Ok, he said,
Miss Humpty Dumpty, and he
put down the phone, and she
stood in the hall of the asylum
with the receiver in her hand,
the image of the typewriter
before her eyes, those poems
banging on the inside of her
head, new ones wanting to
get out, old ones left for dead.
May 22, 2012
May 22, 2012 at 2:14 AM UTC
That little thing, carrying acorns hurriedly
Across from where the tree had fallen.
To many held ones always loose like
A bread crumb staying still till growth.
Time did move and seasons passed, it
Grew as night and day carried onwards
Never shifting only vertical towards the
Yearning the sky just out of touch.
Man tended the wood, where their were
many, only once stood tall. Fields ploughed,
Acorns fell birthed from above but always
Dug up, alone it stood in a field of corn.
Then a road passed through progress had
Taken this field and cut it in two but still it
Stood the test of time, a furry little one climbed
Holding onto to much as many did fall.
Silent night stars fell into the night sky and
In to the darkness did appear two beams of
Unnatural light as if pulled towards it two
Opposite forces moving and still became one.
Lights flickered as rouge coated bark, under
This tree lifeless motion acorns feel like rain
Caught by flickering lights faded glow. It was
Torn, fallen it had stood tall for so long.
An acorn was dropped hurriedly so long
Ago in this spot. And it grew to meet this
Moment of cause and effect, destined to
Be met in a flickering lights end glow.
Sep 13, 2015
Sep 13, 2015 at 4:14 PM UTC
And Gaza Says," O the Sons of Adam
The people of Moses
The people of Muhammad
Stop Will You?
I feel the Tankers on my body
They are trampling me
I hear the Missiles
They pierce through My Soul
I see the tearful Widows
the cries of the children
Fear in the Eyes
the Funerals
I hear the pleas
I hear the screams
the cries for help
the prayers
the curses
the complaints to the Almighty
Blood is Smeared on to My Face
Human blood- a Precious blood
The blood of Adam
I am ploughed
often daily
to bury the lifeless
the young
the old
the men
the women
the infants
I see debris,destruction
devastation
the helplessness
I feel the hatred
in your hearts
your words
translated through your actions
I wonder
Why are the innocents paying the price
of this War?
O Sons of Adam
O the Sons of Abraham
Don't Forget
O You the People of Moses
O You the People of Jesus
O You the People of Muhammad
Your Lord
Your God
is but One
Fear Him
He hates Oppression
Did you all
forget
the Fate of the Pharaoh?
the Worst of the Oppressors."
( Peace be Upon All the Prophets)
Jul 11, 2014
Jul 11, 2014 at 8:03 PM UTC
The sky was a smudge-coloured blue up there
When the sailing ship came in,
With full top gallants and spinnaker flared
Full flight from a world of sin,
The mermaid carved on her prow was proud
As she breasted the salt-licked spray,
Her hair a-stream, as the waves she ploughed
And surged to Ascension Bay.
I’d watched her approach from the Sailor’s Rest
That lay way up on the cliff,
‘It isn’t a question of when,’ he’d said,
‘Nor even a question of if!
The ghost of ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’
Comes in with a clear blue sky,
It happens but once a year,’ he’d said
‘On the twenty-fifth of July!’
I’d laughed at him in the ‘Admiral’s Arms’
As he swallowed his seventh ale,
While others listened with frightened eyes
Each face was a shade of pale,
‘You’ll see it best from the Sailor’s Rest,
That ruin, up on the cliff,
But don’t get caught by the devil’s cohort
Swarming up from the ship.’
They’d scaled the cliff to the Sailor’s Rest,
I knew the story of old,
Had slain the crew of the ‘Captain Teck’,
Or so it was always told,
They’d left the ‘Rest’ in a sea of flames
For the sake of an ancient feud,
While ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’ lay wrecked
By the mutineers that crewed.
They’d seized young Molly, the serving girl
Who’d worked at the Sailor’s Rest,
Had pulled her hair and had pinned her down,
Exposed the girl at the breast,
They took their pleasure and dragged her out
To the edge of the cliff, and pale,
Then flung her screaming down to the deck
Of ‘The Falls of Borrowdale’.
And so it was that I lay with the glass
So firmly fixed to my eye,
Up on the cliff by the Sailor’s Rest
On the twenty-fifth of July,
The ghostly ship flew into the shore
Under a mass of sail,
No sign of the crew, no lookout stood
On watch at the forward rail.
The ship ground up on the Daley Rocks
Rose shrieking, up in the air,
Her timbers creaking and groaning with
The mermaid’s look of despair,
The crew poured out of the lower decks
And flung themselves overboard,
These phantoms, straight from the devil’s lair
To put good men to the sword.
I ran some way from the Sailor’s Rest
Lay under a bush, and hid,
I didn’t know what to do for the best
But watched, to see what they did,
They swarmed all over the Sailor’s Rest
Put everyone to the sword,
Then dragged poor Molly out on the grass
And I cried, ‘Please stop them, Lord!’
Then the phantoms stopped as they heard my cry
And they turned, each black as sin,
Molly let out a quivering sigh
And they burst in flames, within,
She stood alone at the edge of the cliff
And she waved, no longer pale,
While the mermaid smiled on the prow of the ship,
‘The Falls of Borrowdale.’
David Lewis Paget
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 12:09 AM UTC