"pods" poems
the walls of the inside passage
look the same from sound to straight
tugs and plugs dot the coastline
as the quartermaster rolls
giving time for evening glare
pods are in sequence
as the high tail smashes and jaws at the krill
white bellies and sea cows bob and weave
as bow heads glide over haida gwaii
northern lights dance
and tlingit chant
as the tide settles softly on savory shores
their getting hungry in hoonah
as the blue back and beating drums
mark the life blood of the sea
driftwood nets
and sitka spruce
surround the cook house
ravens and tinhorns
man the scullery
kerosene lamps flicker
as clam shells roast
on open flames
villagers stroll
on pebbled sand
*in the harbor of souls
where ships set sail
on might and mass
into the steady winds
of the golden skies*
ice fields (to the north)
of kryptonite blue
cutting hills at
a glacial pace
knuckle clouds
above the snowline
where warlocks
craft a hidden trade
trappers, skinners
muscle shoals
grizzly feasts
in kodiak bowl
determined pilgrims
on a dead horse trail
in search of gold
the holy grail
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 11:52 PM UTC
Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,
This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses - babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.
I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.
This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,
And the wall of the odd corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ----
My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy *****
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.
O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.
22.9k
The gilded opening is terse and with age defined,
Locking away the pathway from a golden mind,
Hairlike roots of tiny letters form a braid,
Ficus-ing along stretching prongs of Purple and Jade,
Pushing they gather and spider around its ovate curves,
occasioning sprouts from cracks lips perturbed,
grammarized rain fertilizing delicate pods of flesh,
blossoming frosty lemon blooms of T's R's come to rest,
The bunched words hanging, dangling like grapes, of frailty,
dipping on fickle branches barely holding on to reality,
threatening to fall like daggered swords,
But alas are some silently whispered Jamaican words
Jul 10, 2018
Jul 10, 2018 at 11:27 AM UTC
Age and Grace
Her steps were always slow;
Even in youth she swayed,
Walked with sultry composure
And seductive flow.
Like a heathen goddess,
She tempers movement with grace.
It was not done out of vanity,
But pleasure in the flowing stream of steps
That mark her pace.
The relaxed fulcrum of her hip
Tilts with undulations in the turf;
Her feet tread lightly with a claim
On the summer fields,
On the bending trees
Where beauty still abounds..
She savors the trailing of her skirt
Through unseen paths in drooping grass.
Until the evening mist accrues
From out the forest paths
Caressing her as she yields,
Until she and it are almost one.
Like Whistler’s “breath on a pane of glass”,
She bargains with nature,
Waning to become an aesthetic phantom.
She stops at a window and watches
With a sad smile, the warm light on life,
The laughter, talk and dancing grace
Of her children, who don’t yet know
The bittersweet taste of withered garlands.
Yet she accepts and passes into the dusk.
Now she executes a careful,
Battement fondu as her hands dip
To reach the soaking pods
Of next year’s summer flowers.
Every move must be planned,
To manage every hour.
For they are as precious now,
As her own days,
Fading into glory and reborn,
Into spring and youth’s careless riot.
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 11:19 AM UTC
Lost Love
He remembers that day
many sad years ago
it was sunny out,
but soon a storm raged.
He returned home early
from work,
eager
to rest and nurse a cold.
Eager
to see his gorgeous wife
fix him a delicious soup
and give loving care,
a remedy not.
He caught a surprise.
Was it then a hallucination?
To see her ex's car
in front of their house,
fanning the flames in his heart?
Or to imagine the house shaking,
or to hear love noises howling
from the rafters of contempt,
as her fireplace warmed tempest.
He sure hoped then... it had been a misfire
it wasn't.
He slowly opened the front door,
walking decrepit and sad,
like he was in hospice care.
He could see the final script
playing out,
more so the tragic ending
the trail of clothes,
her ex-boyfriend's scent,
calamity,
and approaching closer
the devil speaking louder.
He opened the bedroom door
to their parts caught in honey jars
and scarlet red on his tainted wife
over bed sheets of shame.
Their eyes catch,
both flush, and tearful,
as breathing stopped,
his melancholy eyes asking why?
Why?
What about the future lily pods,
our family, house, kids
... and you sell out.
What about being fresh
out of college with our dreams,
passion and honor...us.
What about the bonds,
pinky swears, pricking of blood
marital vows.
Her eyes had no answers.
She cried, loudest
as her ex-boyfriend bolted
not before passing the mill.
He closed her door for good
that mournful day,
dismissing darkness,
opening his wrath for her
in his mind, yet
what words or light can be exchanged?
Uprooted and lost, he walked
scarred over and over
by her promise and lost love.
That was thirty years ago
and he still walks with her
ghosts, and it still pains.
LR-5/4/17
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 11:31 PM UTC
Escape pods
Ferried fears
Gaping heart
Falling tears
Dishevelled mind
Emotional unrest
Watered ground
Familiar guest
Questioned answers
Unanswered questions
Glassy eyes
Increased tension
Dissipating hope
Chewed confidence
Broken spirit
Unwelcomed sentence
Failing health
Unstable mind
Choked fingers
Flying blind
Pathetic plea
Stretched thin
Battered insides
Uncomfortable skin
Eventual stop
Frightful frights
Perceived freedom
Within sight
Bruised being
Absent gods
Relying upon
Escape pods
Oct 16, 2014
Oct 16, 2014 at 9:06 PM UTC
We have engendered them.
Our babies.
Our annelids.
Facsimiles of Us.
A gushing warm viscous fluid
And a conglomerate of meat
From the womb pods of our hive
Rush out into your oxygen.
Our mass will grow indeed.
And,
Our perfect mitosis will repeat -
More beautiful
Babies.
Our perfect mitosis will repeat -
More beautiful
Babies.
8 become 16; 16 become 32
You (solo)
Must know by now; no doubt
Individuality is a cold, broken loop
An anachronism of a bygone era
Pass through Our membrane , insect.
And be born infinitely back through it.
We will have you spread-out in our warmth
Under our skins; apart of our million-chambered heart
Join Us.
Aug 2, 2012
Aug 2, 2012 at 9:13 PM UTC
At night-the light turned off, the filament
Unburdened of its atom-eating charge,
His wife asleep, her breathing dipping low
To touch a swampy source-he thought of death.
Her father's hilltop home allowed him time
To sense the nothing standing like a sheet
Of speckless glass behind his human future.
He had two comforts he could see, just two.
One was the cheerful fullness of most things:
Plump stones and clouds, expectant pods, the soil
Offering up pressure to his knees and hands.
The other was burning the trash each day.
He liked the heat, the imitation danger,
And the way, as he tossed in used-up news,
String, napkins, envelopes, and paper cups,
Hypnotic tongues of order intervened.
5.9k
a million petals ago, in colored meadows
stems, gathered in far off fields
windy, wild born
bright pods of summer
split in August suns
earth bound, await
September floods
cool, foggy rains
cycle of rebirth
wildflower seeds falling
back to earth
Jun 5, 2014
Jun 5, 2014 at 11:40 PM UTC
My next door
neighbour has a tree
that looks like jacaranda.
its branches reach right over
here and stroke at my verandah.
if you boil it's seed pods up
and steep a cup of tea,
the brew will mend
a broken heart
i've heard
apparently.
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 6:42 AM UTC
Late spring when we first saw the house,
with its back door a cave obscured
behind those breaking waves of blue
and white surge-foam of sweet blossom.
Bees, pollen and petals made it
difficult to weave a way in;
and in the drench of sun-showers
the water-falls of flowers purled.
Summer slowed the fall to trickles.
And since you’ve missed most of autumn,
let me say the wisteria
now is mostly air and grey cloud.
The few curved spatulas of pods
rattle like the wood-slat clackers
of a ghost-dispersing wind chime,
high against Himalayan grey.
Jun 26, 2010
Jun 26, 2010 at 2:20 PM UTC
I
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,
Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,
She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,
Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.
II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,
Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.
III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
4.5k
Sweet tamarind pods stick to the warm black tarmac
where fortunate doves wander about in the shade,
trilling to themselves, and each other.
Either something strikes them as funny,
or they just love their easy lives.
Certainly, they sound so different from their
modest cousins, cooing sadly in colder places.
Born here in Paradise, these birds wear blue
eye shadow every day, and not just on weekends.
Late afternoon finds me in their lazy midst,
hair wet and curling, sand stuck to my bare, tanned feet.
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 4:28 PM UTC
Swift swallows sailing from the Spanish main,
O rain-birds racing merrily away
From hill-tops parched with heat and sultry plain
Of wilting plants and fainting flowers, say--
When at the noon-hour from the chapel school
The children dash and scamper down the dale,
Scornful of teacher's rod and binding rule
Forever broken and without avail,
Do they still stop beneath the giant tree
To gather locusts in their childish greed,
And chuckle when they break the pods to see
The golden powder clustered round the seed?
3.4k
Water the Greenhouse
Water the plants on the deck.
Walk Autumn Moon.
Salutation to the Sun
Yoga on the deck
Prayers
Angel of Air
Reading & Study with Ken
Sipping herbals & he, his coffee.
Pick up.
Moving the living room furniture
Rearranging. Sweeping. Mopping.
Clean the kennel.
Fresh bedding for Autumn.
A break for Sevenfold Peace in the sunshine.
Listening to the Holy Stream of Sound.
Playing with Autumn.
Laughing with Ken.
Continuing with rearranging & cleaning
Done!
Another break
With Ken, Autumn & Habibie
By the firepit in front of the shop.
Auti chasing water up and down and around.
Walk to Alli's, talk and pick up the key.
Cut broccoli, cabbage, carrots, & kale
Add a few pods of peas
Drizzle poppy seed dressing.
Two bowls with 1/2 cup of rolled oats each
Add cinnamon.
Taking a teaspoon
Half full with honey.
Dipping it into the center of the oats
Pouring boiling water over the honey.
Into the oats.
Stirring and stirring
Watching the cinnamon spirals
Mix into the sweet porridge.
Small cacao chips, sunflower seeds
A few raisins
Sprinkled as garnish.
Eating together
Smallville, playing with Autumn
Habibie resting near by.
She maybe carrying kittens.
Too early to tell.
Tired. Good night. Sleep.
2:30 am.
Ken up watching a movie on is phone.
My, my, how times have changed.
Return to bed.
Writing, writing, writing….now it is done.
May 16, 2021
May 16, 2021 at 1:07 PM UTC
PEA pods cling to stems.
Neponset, the village,
Clings to the Burlington railway main line.
Terrible midnight limiteds roar through
Hauling sleepers to the Rockies and Sierras.
The earth is slightly shaken
And Neponset trembles slightly in its sleep.
3.3k
the world is a wild and weary place,
fully sunk in spiral ******
fully strummed in skin water waves.
bound by death from the very first verse:
first love.
first this.
go forth my machines, be fruitful and jettison.
color says hang at the edge of our lips.
smell the books.
remind us; books.
& before the big blue vast takes it all, that
sunstruck lomographia light,
transposed no-makeup california girl, she
walks before me along the boulders of the wharf.
real summer breathing.
our bodies, piled
and starbleached ripe. [like heap of buffalo skulls]
maybe then a futuristic dinner, where everyone gathers in floating space pods
singing hymns beneath,
above,
between
the lights and music.
reality is: blacktop shards against my knees,
something burning as it trickles to my chin, man of me
living the city glisten, city green
& pink.
city midnight and barely breathing.
destroyers, we are.
and what? what am i, father? man of industry?
man of workwelded science? secure as the armadillo,
armadillo picket fence.
am i of halfbreed phosphorus?
americana?
built on love and hate and television.
nat geo channel: [a gecko licks dew from its eyes
on the coastal sand dunes of namibia]
money. women. go west young man.
be a hand tightening ribs.
be a quaking echo of mammalian design.
a paradigm of seed my fire.
quest for fire.
for uncut diamond; like foggy strawberry rock in the africa-boy's fingers.
or cut steel; phallus of toyish death between a brazil-boy’s fingers.
pulled teeth; bits of wet fruit in the young afghani’s hand.
& icecream trolley; pedestal etched iron; denim and *** and
microwaves ::::::
white man: what I got ? what I got ?
manifest destiny: gold bricks and beer.
blood soaked socks.
cyprus burnt umbers.
tribes decomposing at the bottoms of styrofoam cups.
like coin-op wormies.
& eighteen inch circumference blades make round rolling high pitched songs deep in the skin of old mother earth.
old baby cakes.
old life in slow motion, all motion, all
of particle cannon treatise.
40 ounce bounce.
watery us
below.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 2:17 AM UTC
come along with me
lets look into the life
of the common garden pea
maybe you like them
maybe you do not
but these are my words to
the common garden pea
from me to them
we have all seen them
and had to work out how we eat them
better stuck in mash potato
than balanced on the knife or fork
kids just distribute them so neatly
on the table and the floor
then hold up there plate
and ask for some more
but have you tried to grow them?
if not come on a journey with me
plant some peas in the soil
water them liberally
then let the season warm the earth
after about 14 days or so
you will see little green shoots
place some sticks in
for the peas
likes something to hold on
just like you and me
for the pea has a hard life
as the season moves on
the pea holds out little tendon
that grip on the sticks
then the snails move in
danger will robertson
for in one night
the snail can ****** all of these
the peas that do survive
suddenly come alive
shooting up like rockets
then after the flowers form
all white in the sun
the pods form
and in them form the peas
those sweet nuggets
we love called garden peas
Aug 25, 2012
Aug 25, 2012 at 2:06 PM UTC
the season-change of the vagrant pole-star easily picks up a sip
from the list of ducks of the night-watchers
standing on the bye-lane of the horse-race … by the weight of the confession made
by the spelling-mistakes of a moonlit night to the lotus-leaves … the amputated
tongues of the night-bulbs gradually rolls down to the banyan-pods of the side-characters
the sharp archer of the star-apple moves away some furlongs from the usual
word-stairs and swallowed a whole grammar with fumes by spoon
thus with the number of velocity-poems that the punjabi with boutique prints
can produce… or will produce … gluttonous flower-vase of the magic-painter
can make cool the slaughter-ground … spread to the horizons of the krishnachura
that is deviated from its own track
Sep 14, 2010
Sep 14, 2010 at 5:30 PM UTC
oh, san juans, your riches beckon
your wealth, your beauty calls
your waveless, salty waters blue
my heart since childhood draws
your waters lap at darkened rock
'round islands, bays and inlets fill
with returning salmon teeming
your breaking waters thrill
your tide, oh ever river changing
charges muddy oyster flats
your thriving pods of orca leap
o'er spray in mid-air acrobats
from seabed swift, cold and deep
the lushness of your green hills rise
your sun falls fleet like shooting star
your sparkling waters mesmerize
sailing craft from ’neath horizon
angels spread their wings of color
skirt your shoals and ply your straits
find safety anchored in your harbors
oh, san juans, your wonder waits
your treasure and your magic calls
your waveless, crystal waters blue
my heart since youth still draws
calls me to return each year
to dip my paddle deep
when life averts the journey there
in dreams you beckon while i sleep
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 2:22 AM UTC
i given nothing
i abandoned
i adopted
i dropout
i garage
i Apple
i NeXT
i Pixar
i Apple
i pilfered i
i invented i
i produced i
i market i
i retail i
i am i
i am
i
i tech beauty
i consumer fetish
i whom you love
i sleekest widgets
i Toy Story
i Macintosh
i macbook
i Lisa
iTunes
iPod
iPhone
iPad
i more
i rebel
i genius
i visionary
i entrepreneur
i world changer
i exceptionalism
i capital market hero
i bigger then business
i cool capitalism
i myth
i "the man"
i worker
i employer
i boss
i thief
i savior
i billionaire
i venerated
i vanity
i Buddhist
i prophet
i redeemed
i 1 in 300 million
i America
i sing the pathos
i am the creed
i define the ethos
i Steve Jobs
i amassed riches
i accolade crowned
i ingratiate world
i virtue
i success
i creativity
i favored
i Midas
i bedeviled
i tested
i afflicted
i retire
i human
i mortal
i succumb
i eulogized
i leave legacy of i
i am an MBA case study
i employed workers
i peddled intrepid product cycles
i subject of amusing anecdotes
i am heroic corporate folklore
i grew pods full of music
i incite kids to thumb phones
i captivate consumer imagination
i built rock solid balance sheet
i erected toxic Chinese factories
i enriched investors
i am the cool corporate brand
i inspired a million unused i apps
i hipster capitalism
i imposed my will
i insisted
i am that i am
i cannot take it with me
i leave blue jeans
i leave NB sneakers
i leave black collarless shirt
i will be asked what
i did with the time
i was given?
i did the best i could
i played the hand dealt
i parlayed it into a royal flush
i filled it up with i
i ask why
i am no more?
i leave the world
i am no more
Godspeed Beloved
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs
(February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)
jbm
Oakland
10/6/11
Nov 4, 2011
Nov 4, 2011 at 10:40 PM UTC
1.
seeds of crimson, slightly sweet
alien pods of ruby meat
like exoskeletal teeth.
scores of crimson, holding in
like breath, its babes of sin.
little beetles; ****** tears.
one swarming conglomerate.
as if in fear, they huddle close
to await their fate in quiet fits.
2.
the
unfurling!scarlet!starfish!mothership!
sprawls out
fleshyfingers, fatwithfruit.
seedling children populate her innards
like a red-skinned race of juicy mutes.
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 11:54 PM UTC
Barely Walks.
And does not sleep
day squinting
night in trance;
Moonblinked
& Anomie doesn’t speak
What she thinks
Until she drink
Apart; life projector spreads in sheets
Anomie not loveable
so off she goes
with dogs in sheets
that bark and bones
& in the padded womb
zaps milky-Light
synthetic-filtered-bright
A spotlight for the bees
Getting Drunk between her Knees
Confusion explodes confetti
disorientation takes the plow
*** the only how
An ****** or a fake hopeless meow
She lives in mental corners
watching window borders
They push in; she falls out
Brand new day
Teeth on pillows crack
Anomie's mind
has to react
She's fast to split-
Spit out a rebuttal
method witty-tactix kit
No one tells her time to go
But when Bee's belly full
She-goes - Self-loathes
Morning Glories still shriveled in their pods
They own the glory of her story and her song
Hiding in sarcastic retreat for clean feet
under ***** water bathes
wipes off the meat
Not your friend
She's trouble to love
The dirtiest dove
Anomie is naked and she's hated
Take away the curtain glove
eye slit under sunlit
She recovers
Don't judge
it's all her love
but you ****** Anomie anyways
just because
The Thrill
Feb 4, 2013
Feb 4, 2013 at 4:48 AM UTC
~~~
out of an arid ocean
You came up
hoary with barnacles
grey with skin
a spray of stars erupted
startled . awash
against its own night
and down again You go
to know the
mating of tendrils
the killing planes of seashores
the antiquities of the sun
were we there once?
in the phosphor seasons
we played with You
as You are even then
so self contained we found
no need to surrender
to the patient
winds of change
now You echo in
strange meridians
storming Your gusts
in far off topography
Your great tail
sings its starlight way
homing to its thunder
~~~
they came
oh, yes, they came
to harvest Your virtues
their decks slick
with Your blood
crimson stains ugly with lucre
their forest of masts
peopled by
Your ghosts
sing ! O leviathan ! sing
lift Your voice and
bellow to us
of Your lost pods
Your wonderful oceans
Your salty maternity
*Your
song
is
heard
by
GOD*
(c) soulsurvivor
Nov 5, 2014
Nov 5, 2014 at 6:04 AM UTC
On moon-damp sheets, you slowly open my violet fig, passing halves tongue to tongue,
its seed-pearls, captive minutes embraced by our soft lips,
each velvet pulse a swallowed clock tick, unthreading the night’s camisole—unstrung
Our minutes take root inside our souls, night’s vines in green hour’s gentle grip,
soft pods burst open, figs too ripe to cradle our desires,
their wet seeds, exploring, ticking onward—dreaming of a solar eclipse
Dawn’s pallid hand already tests the window, sprouting its cruel thorns and briars,
we stack our stolen seconds like leaves against the latch, a barricade of lost cries,
yet every green minute bleeds to gold, slipping through fingers, we tire—
Seconds steep in our bellies like sour home-brewed wine highs,
bubbles of yesterday escape—tiny pale moons clinging to folds and hips,
drunk on recycled time, we speak only in overlapping echoes of whys?
One corner of the mattress folds like a calendar page—blank, stripped,
our shadows lengthen backward, seeking last night’s candlelight,
Dawn’s fiery glow becomes a vortex of memory and lust—we slip, hip to hip
A seed-shaped cog spills within; its milk is bitter sun, not honeyed night,
the soft ticking falters—our wetness rusts the teeth of fragile gears,
we press our palms to the fracture, bluffing the hunger of day’s appetite.
All swallowed instants germinate in rapture; green shoots flare wild from every tear,
morning slips through the leaf-lattice, feral, unstoppable—death,
the room sighs oxygen unearned; we wake leaf-littered, dewed, a frontier unclear
One last seed, caged behind the sternum, ticks backwards, waiting for breath,
it counts in reverse, each tick a small fist begging still to be loved,
we do not let it out; we cradle the echo, its name?
Aug 24, 2025
Aug 24, 2025 at 2:45 PM UTC