"plumed" poems
The goddess
Of golden-faced victory
Her head brilliantly decorated with green laurels
Victoria, bestowing victory for what is named after her
Down to the red-plumed Romans with their gleaming swords
Nike, champion of the Greek gods.
Riding the chariot of victory into battle
The laurels catches the light of a mirror
It dances away, after its victorious champion
She may be a bit crazy or at least hungry
For the taste of that sweet victory
Let her be Roman; let her be Greek;
She is never weak
What one might say, she does not know
For her victory is clogging up her ears
Goddess of victory, we all want a taste of her power.
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 9:13 AM UTC
Neither clown nor child nor black
nor white but verticle
and a questioning innocence
dressed in night and snow:
The mother smiles at the sailor,
the fisherman at the astronaunt,
but the child child does not smile
when he looks at the bird child,
and from the disorderly ocean
the immaculate passenger
emerges in snowy mourning.
I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings
but hard little oars
on its sides:
it was as old as the salt;
the age of moving water,
and it looked at me from its age:
since then I know I do not exist;
I am a worm in the sand.
the reasons for my respect
remained in the sand:
the religious bird
did not need to fly,
did not need to sing,
and through its form was visible
its wild soul bled salt:
as if a vein from the bitter sea
had been broken.
Penguin, static traveler,
deliberate priest of the cold,
I salute your vertical salt
and envy your plumed pride.
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LOVELY Semiramis
Closes her slanting eyes:
Dead is she long ago.
From her fan, sliding slow,
Parrot-bright fire's feathers,
Gilded as June weathers,
Plumes bright and shrill as grass
Twinkle down; as they pass
Through the green glooms in Hell
Fruits with a tuneful smell,
Grapes like an emerald rain,
Where the full moon has lain,
Greengages bright as grass,
Melons as cold as glass,
Piled on each gilded booth,
Feel their cheeks growing smooth.
Apes in plumed head-dresses
Whence the bright heat hisses,--
Nubian faces, sly
Pursing mouth, slanting eye,
Feel the Arabian
Winds floating from the fan.
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In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion—
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair!
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow,
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago),
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.
Wanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
Spirits moving musically,
To a lute’s well-tuned law,
Bound about a throne where, sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate.
(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate !)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed,
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh—but smile no more.
5k
I fell out of time
into wavery scarves of seconds
glittering of snowflake anticipation, and
minutes of quiet purring joy.
Tonguing thickening clouds of breathsteam
he has always been a familiar stranger;
every joint is a champagne cork, white
marble smile that bubbled
over wooden lips. Tell a story
in ten words or less, tap fingers pointed like guns
twice against her hot temple, smile
and half a tooth still ****** Tell a story with one
word, bang, and sock away the other nine.
Turn to a cat and say, I’ve got your tongue.
We sat together on our heels in the smoke
and snowfall, the plumed weapon of breath
melting. Cars slide into the lot, ice over easy.
The alcohol tasted like soap. It is not enough
for maybes and not-know-hows---grating
cheepcheap common sense, fail me now.
Maybe you didn’t write LOVE on her
battered wrist but LIVE instead,
maybe you stole all the magnetic a’s
off the fridge, you’re not the one
who highlighted instructions on a macaroni
box, so you broke all the chalk and wrote
the name of your childhood dog above the sink.
Maybe “hostile” is a fuzzed blue comforter
three months past laundry day, every lint
ball sharp as the word “cut”, the word *****
the word “scream”. Maybe I’m naive, sentimental, but
I believe in a common kindness
like the common cold running thin
in threads of worn-out heart chambers.
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 12:07 AM UTC
512
The Soul has Bandaged moments—
When too appalled to stir—
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her—
Salute her—with long fingers—
Caress her freezing hair—
Sip, Goblin, from the very lips
The Lover—hovered—o’er—
Unworthy, that a thought so mean
Accost a Theme—so—fair—
The soul has moments of Escape—
When bursting all the doors—
She dances like a Bomb, abroad,
And swings upon the Hours,
As do the Bee—delirious borne—
Long Dungeoned from his Rose—
Touch Liberty—then know no more,
But Noon, and Paradise—
The Soul’s retaken moments—
When, Felon led along,
With shackles on the plumed feet,
And staples, in the Song,
The Horror welcomes her, again,
These, are not brayed of Tongue—
3.8k
In the twilight zephyrs
under milky way skies
I stroll beside my peacock plumed God
Along the banks of the Yamuna river
with captivating charm
He teaches me
the Language of Love
Honeybees buzz around us
even though the coral pink
sun has melted into a
puddle of nectar at
His silken lotus Feet
and all the flowers have
folded their drowsy petals
raven heavens raise their
ebony veils and a
chorus of rhapsodic stars
chant Krishna's glorious name
I feel His raincloud blue face
close to mine
lightning from His eyes
strikes my Soul
...and We dance...
A trillion psychedelic umbrellas
whirling, dazzling Sufi circles
beneath the Golden parasol
of God's enormous
Love
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Aug 7, 2013
Aug 7, 2013 at 9:25 PM UTC
Wife-beater, drum player
blower of holy pan-pipes
Plumed, bejeweled in ****** plastic
Inca priest, mestizo beast
multi-kulti prophet
(who chooses to live in the USA)
where liberals kow-tow
while you show them how
to adulate indigenous
crypto misogynous
eager to pay eager to please
diversity’s devotees buy your CDs
a perfect idiot from the mythic Sierra
naming your brood after Andean peaks
pre-Columbian pachamama freaks
eat it up: your Inca schtick
(but ask the battered gringa-chick
about your unsustainable ways:
who hits who smiles who beats who pays ?)
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 11:58 AM UTC
Mourning - you flew over indigo waters,
landing
Stealthy stalker you walked the shallows
billing silvery minnows
On rust red stilts, you're built
to move in watery fields
Eyes piercing depths of algae blooms
rippled, your swaying seaweed room
Silent hunter,
feathery plumed
Jul 24, 2012
Jul 24, 2012 at 11:19 AM UTC
126
To fight aloud, is very brave—
But gallanter, I know
Who charge within the *****
The Cavalry of Woe—
Who win, and nations do not see—
Who fall—and none observe—
Whose dying eyes, no Country
Regards with patriot love—
We trust, in plumed procession
For such, the Angels go—
Rank after Rank, with even feet—
And Uniforms of Snow.
2.6k
The sun, a heavy spider, spins in the thirsty sky.
The wind hides under cactus leaves, in doorway corners. Only the wry
Small shadow accompanies Hamlet-Petrouchka's march - the slight
Wry sniggering shadow in front of the morning, turning at noon, behind towards night.
The plumed cavalcade has passed to tomorrow, is lost again;
But the wisecrack-mask, the quick-flick-fanfare of the cane remain.
Diminuendo of footsteps even is done:
Only remain, Don Quixote, hat, cane, smile and sun.
Goliaths fall to our sling, but craftier fates than these
Lie ambushed - malice of open manholes, strings in the dark and falling trees.
God kicks our backsides, scatters peel on the smoothest stair;
And towering centaurs steal the tulip lips, the aureoled hair,
While we, craned from the gallery, throw our cardboard flowers
And our feet **** to tunes not played for ours.
2.6k
[Dedicated to G. M. Marston]
Pale as the night that pales
In the dawn's pearl-pure pavillion,
I wait for thee, with my dove's breast
Shuddering, a god its bitter guest-
Have I not gilded my nails
And painted my lips with vermillion ?
Am I not wholly stript
Of the deeds and thoughts that obscure thee?
I wait for thee, my soul distraught
With aching for some nameless naught
In its most arcane crypt-
Am I not fit to endure thee?
Girded about the paps
With a golden girdle of glory,
Dost thou wait me, thy slave who am,
As a wolf lurks for a strayed white lamb?
The chain of the stars snaps,
And the deep of night is hoary!
Thou whose mouth is a flame
With its seven-edged sword proceeding,
Come ! I am writhing with despair
Like a snake taken in a snare,
Moaning thy mystical name
Till my tongue is torn and bleeding!
Have I not gilded my nails
And painted my lips with vermillion?
Yea ! thou art I; the deed awakes,
Thy lightening strikes; thy thunder breaks
Wild as the bride that wails
In the bridegroom's plumed pavillion!
2.5k
O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute.
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute
Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak Forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the Fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
2.1k
My heart now aches with sleepy dreariness:
A dreamy wake from whose dull, soothing spell
I can’t awake, nor can I sleep to bless
My dreams with profound ecstasy as well
For all recurring visions, sweet and deep,
Have turnéd to a black and empty void,
And all the stepping stones of pale night
Are clouded by the mists of murky sleep,
Bedewed with memories that I enjoyed:
The visions with which I can’t reunite.
My mind now pines for all those moments when
Endured had love and bliss before slow time
Had bound such moments once and then again
Shall bind more dreams and memories, sublime
Oh, vista of my dreams, unseen, unheard
Your brow is laid with shawls of quietness
Your pinions are held tight with the chain
Of all my visions; fly then, flame-plumed bird
And sing such sacred song you can’t express
Once I now free you from my wilting brain
My tears are of ripe joy and bliss’s ruth
And though my days are thus outright expelled
I shall keep in my core, the flames of youth
Which once I had in early years, beheld
Sweet memories, ye shaking leaves, adieu
I bid you well in winter and in spring
A-flickering before fate’s icy breath
And though, no longer, shall I see all you
I’m glad you flew upon nostalgia’s wing
And warméd my cold heart before my death
Jul 9, 2014
Jul 9, 2014 at 11:51 PM UTC
Mourning - you flew over indigo waters,
landing
Stealthy stalker you walked the shallows
billing silvery minnows
On rust red stilts, you're built
to move in watery fields
Eyes piercing depths of algae blooms
rippled, your swaying seaweed room
Silent hunter,
feathery plumed
Feb 20, 2014
Feb 20, 2014 at 3:17 PM UTC
What if I,
in artless youth,
had never heard that call to life?
Had never gazed upon that beacon
And found a world beyond my own?
I may have loved my ignorant prison,
cherished those gossamer walls of thought,
evaded that thirst for wretched freedom,
and left alone
those dank recesses,
content to slink away
existence upon existence.
Never would I have borne
the timid wings of aspiration---
a sudden quickening:
turning ambition,
turning desire,
turning identity.
Never would I
have kissed the sweet earth goodbye,
embraced the rush of wind and sky and soared
into the enthralling
the intoxicating
the cavernous--
Big Blue.
Ambition unbound!
How did it feel
to free the fatal sun-seared wax and flesh,
and witness plumed Promise plunge
down.
down.
down.
into the gaping sea
perhaps resurfacing on some unknown shore?
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 5:24 AM UTC
Beloved
I yearn night and day
each blood tinged second
for the intravenous
of Your intoxicating Presence
like ripe, ruby grapes crave
to be tread and pressed into
the drunken bliss
of holy wine
Like the cow maiden Radha
and Princess Mirabai
pine for their peacock plumed
Blue Lord’s
rapturous darshan
Like Magdalene’s tears rolling
down her love soaked cheeks
seek only to wash and kiss
gentle Jesus’ celestial
Lotus feet
Like the great scholar Rumi
scouring the desolate streets
of Damascus
searches for even the
faintest echo
ghostly glimpse
of his beloved
God mad vagabond
Shams of Tabriz
Like my breath liberated from this
time bound, earthly form
soars free, unfettered
a shooting star
exploding into the
chaotic brilliance
of Your perfect Love
Your incomprehensible, pristine,
pure, primordial Peace
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 11:56 PM UTC
He flew,
far from the plumed flock,
above the vast stretch of sands,
over crags and boulders.
flew into forlorn uncharted lands,
into the lure of the unknown,
searching for a tree to perch.
a temporary haven in encircling fetters,
a home away from home.
seeking comfort where none exists.
Saw the twilight nibbling at,
the blazing brightness,
from the sinking sun.
an orb of orange red.
a tad too naughty to tame,
playing out its remaining moments.
Nowhere within eyeshot,
a crown of supine leafy green,
propped firm on poles of brown,
shooting out into the darkened sky.
nor the whirr of nocturnal moths,
leaving the hide of leprous barks.
Like a kite at the beck of winds,
slipped out from the controlling grip,
with the string hanging loosely down,
he swayed and tossed in boundless blue.
below lay the abysmal depths,
and sand dunes forming cancerous lumps.
The sun that sank into roaring depths,
left not even a glint of light,
unable to hold on to a willed direction,
and passing through the Stygian sky,
he knew his body growing heavy,
felt the ache in every limb,
and the wings, losing their power to soar
x x x x x x
The descent was far too abrupt,
rudderless and reeling,
he dropped down,
like a missile, blasted out,
and none heard the fierce thud!
Mar 15, 2018
Mar 15, 2018 at 9:20 AM UTC
How shall my animal
Whose wizard shape I trace in the cavernous skull,
Vessel of abscesses and exultation's shell,
Endure burial under the spelling wall,
The invoked, shrouding veil at the cap of the face,
Who should be furious,
Drunk as a vineyard snail, flailed like an octopus,
Roaring, crawling, quarrel
With the outside weathers,
The natural circle of the discovered skies
Draw down to its weird eyes?
How shall it magnetize,
Towards the studded male in a bent, midnight blaze
That melts the lionhead's heel and horseshoe of the heart
A brute land in the cool top of the country days
To trot with a loud mate the haybeds of a mile,
Love and labour and ****
In quick, sweet, cruel light till the locked ground sprout
The black, burst sea rejoice,
The bowels turn turtle,
Claw of the crabbed veins squeeze from each red particle
The parched and raging voice?
Fishermen of mermen
Creep and harp on the tide, sinking their charmed, bent pin
With bridebait of gold bread, I with a living skein,
Tongue and ear in the thread, angle the temple-bound
Curl-locked and animal cavepools of spells and bone,
Trace out a tentacle,
Nailed with an open eye, in the bowl of wounds and ****
To clasp my fury on ground
And clap its great blood down;
Never shall beast be born to atlas the few seas
Or poise the day on a horn.
Sigh long, clay cold, lie shorn,
Cast high, stunned on gilled stone; sly scissors ground in frost
Clack through the thicket of strength, love hewn in pillars drops
With carved bird, saint, and suns the wrackspiked maiden mouth
Lops, as a bush plumed with flames, the rant of the fierce eye,
Clips short the gesture of breath.
Die in red feathers when the flying heaven's cut,
And roll with the knocked earth:
Lie dry, rest robbed, my beast.
You have kicked from a dark den, leaped up the whinnying light,
And dug your grave in my breast.
1.8k
Loneliness is now upon his throat
I know it for sure
What ails him hasn't a cure
He's shrinking like a sinking boat.
On the perch a plumed pain
He's lost without a care
Tells the vacant stare
Dooming into a never regain.
Death is an easy height to scale
When life remains to grieve
Without any incentive
As love retires to a dark well.
He's fading in the lost glory
And I know it for sure
What's killing him has no cure
My budgie called Story.
Jun 11, 2016
Jun 11, 2016 at 11:50 AM UTC
Cheers from inside the catacombs of just-alive vagabonds & miscreant self-delusions of sagacious sabotage & pyrrhic moonscapes, brandishing our eternal return
a tabula rasa for respect & character - bottoms up, too. Mona Lisa
Shroud of Turin, ******* on a trunk. Gamble 66
for trays, dealing steam carrots.
Gag reflex to polite televangelists giving viewers auspicious immunity.
Habits cede to Power, acquiesce to Power, love power.
Peculiarity can recognize & organize to displace.
Something suspicious may run amok , antithetical to the divide & conquer trite.
Defeating paragons, i , Plumed Serpent of release & capture beats, borrowing color from a skylark in forever-flight, conjure remedial winds
Guide inimical bows subsumed in a cosmo-prole dew against the fasces of a few.
Apr 7, 2010
Apr 7, 2010 at 10:20 PM UTC
O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
1.7k
the sun,
the moon,
the both of us.
portland to portland,
we are genocide: america.
we are teen murders & horror sitcoms.
globally tuneforked sacrifices,
with commercial breaks.
land of the plumed serpent.
built on the burial grounds of chieftains tall,
but dead men.
public access: watch the tallest towers fall.
in them, men of manifest.
a beast shook.
land of the war artifact.
our birth.
our thousand tongues.
our endless hovering demons/drones/droids of the bomb.
of the eye always watching.
destroyer.
a solar born son of aquarian blood.
prince of the death cult prestigious.
skull & ***** & throned with the boom-button ready.
aligned to die for great glory and bury the dragon one hundred thousand light-years into the dark rift.
heart of milky her.
history favors the bomb.
flavors the chip
dipped.
there was that death of the last cowboy.
his dreams returned to the stars.
his planet returned to chaos,
&/or love.
but both.
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 6:37 AM UTC
A plume should be a thing lovely and light
dancing violet as it's fanned
at the flanks of the blue
bird-of-paradise
who hangs limberly
to solicit a mate
It should curl
blinding white at the back
of the puffy Samoyed
prancing fancy to please a master
who also preens on the oval
of a sawdust track
It should flop
red at the top of gold-painted tin
helmet awry on the head
of an aspiring actor
who plays centurion for tips
outside a mobbed Colosseum
It should spray
as clear and cooling drops out
the copper mouth of a grass-snake
green hose uncoiled by
the sneaky dad who tickles
giggles from sweaty kids
It should flutter
gray at the tail end of a quill
bouncing to the frenzied
jottings of an anachronistic
frump who takes the pain to outfit
himself far too seriously
A plume should not be a thing of plague
riding currents kissed by taint-
sweet crude blasted from a wound
gouged in the crust
of a frigid deep to feed
our shallow lust for eases
It shouldn't choke
It shouldn't muck
It shouldn't tar
It can't help
poisoning that last pretense
we cared about anything,
be it plumed or not, but
the finality of
a bottom line
May 31, 2010
May 31, 2010 at 6:54 AM UTC
In that age of aged seasons
predating our own's four-square rhyme,
a reasonable jape was hatched
beaked but hairy to a guilt-free Hen
whose humors ran with jaw-slackening
creatures, foul and not at all bird-like.
Soon after its mixed-up cracking,
two prattle-prone Wrens hopped to spread
rumors of an un-chickity chick
and the ungodly origins
of fatherless yowls. Their tittered jeers
found welcome ears, and Mother Hen preened
her babe chased by merciless guffaws.
This Hen was not one to lay
down meekly, and a never stony
tongue rolled out its antidote myth
to a pair of gabby Gulls: "My child
may look not-much, but he's divine
engendered and miraculous born.
Sure he's messy, ah, but you'll see
he'll grow to be, much-much-more than
any feathery tykes your like did bear."
She clucked it so seriously,
who were they to doubt her? The plumed
sniggering ceased. But before another
grateful day could dawn in a hallelujah
glare of right angles, out pecking
up a snack, Mother made eye
contact with an unfortunate Fate
brandishing his lucky-gripped ax.
What of her wonder-why, joke of a boy?
Left alone at straw-pocket home,
waiting for his Hen to return,
he starved then decayed to hollow bones,
and was never thought of again.
Apr 1, 2010
Apr 1, 2010 at 12:43 PM UTC