"portents" poems
Its like when you hold a new puppy
You can tell it is squirming
Wishing for the freedom to go play
It isn’t that you wouldn’t let the puppy go
If it really wanted to be let go...
But you blind yourself with infinite and simultaneous
Justifications of other possible portents
And so you cling
ever tighter
Saying puppy sit still
“Puppy I love you”
And when the puppy finally learns it cannot struggle anymore
You profess
True Love!
Jul 24, 2010
Jul 24, 2010 at 10:07 AM UTC
for Harlon Rivers
the river potion,
the river portent,
the river potent
it is all of these and not one
he is bank sided,
observing the false idols,
the image mirrored
in the glass of the river
transfigured molecularly
he becomes something ferried frothily, forcefully
as if a twig
or a small thing of human manufacture,
an object tossed up airborne-repeatedly
his poetry:
the clash of particles at the many junctions
of objects and water, eddies and the currents,
ceaselessly circumnavigating,
searching revisionary pathways
directed,
but randomized,
prisoner of the flows,
servant to the wind's directives and the
earths magnetic indivisible undulating waves
thinking,
this life,
its unsteady gait,
the irreverent wavering of drunkenness
resultant from potent potions,
portents of inopportune position
in him,
my own histories,
my poetic recordings
also become
water borne,
watermarked,
replayed back for me,
for erasure, censure, closure
and rededication
this River
is a tapestry,
a torn map,
drawn on broken shards
of slivered water,
living with all the others
but we,
are the untitled,
we,
are the un-entitled,
and he is the
Rivers
<•>
Aug 17, 2017
Aug 17, 2017 at 2:36 PM UTC
A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.
A man who writes knows too much,
such spells and fetiches!
As if erections and congresses and products
weren't enough; as if machines and galleons
and wars were never enough.
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.
Dear love, you are that man.
Never loving ourselves,
hating even our shoes and our hats,
we love each other, precious, precious.
Our hands are light blue and gentle.
Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.
But when we marry,
the children leave in disgust.
There is too much food and no one left over
to eat up all the weird abundance.
6.7k
Day's end, sun's caisson doth wend
Residual rays a respite to append
Twilight's shroud dreary dividend
Swirls of gray into firmament blend
Vestments of light shed sacral veil
Luna's naked, pale orb flashes its spell
Twinkling sprites across dark tides sail
Constellation's mystical portents braille
Nyx, Erebos eclipse Hemera's blithe melody with bass duet
Earth's warmed bed yields its thermal blanket
Ocean tides move in rhythmic tandem to cadence of lunar clarinet
Swarming shadows stalk each footstep paring each dark secret
Greek gods
Nyx: goddess of Night
Erebos: goddess of Darkness
Hemera: goddess of Day
Sep 15, 2011
Sep 15, 2011 at 6:35 AM UTC
Sitting in labyrinths of cobblestone intestines
I’m learning to eat the entrails of sacrifice
only domestic, never hunted.
pick up spoon. put down
put down. put-down.
pick up. um . spoon.
um… putdown.
there are motions for eating and I do them.
soothsayer, look down
pay attention to positions, shapes
knife. butter. um…
bread. no. breadth.
better. no. butter-better. focus.
knife. better. bread.
knife, knife of haruspex. knife breadth.
okay… deep breath.
I have divided the livers
and the watchers of victims.
I have written on
the anomalies in my bronze living,
what I should look for,
what they should allow for.
my protruding viscera,
my ancient autopsy of starving.
Starving made me easier to tie.
easier to lift. made me feel
gutted out like finished
ice-cream containers
but, starving made me
full of household gods.
made me divine. made sheeps fly.
made days disappear and made cold cold cold seem like
simmering. made staying out of sight a piece of cake.
cake. starving made me rich when I found little
boys betting quarters for eating bowels of
goats. made me small enough to fit through
playground gates so I could swing
swing in earthquakes, and portents.
now, I listen to Memor, a man
who knows nothing of starving
talk about how starving I am.
tomorrow I have to advise
tomorrow I have to weigh
tomorrow I have to swallow
tomorrow I have to
tomorrow I have
tomorrow I am half
and starving made me whole.
Apr 23, 2013
Apr 23, 2013 at 3:49 PM UTC
i miss the dogfight
of our teeth squaring off
in a shiny mirror.
you could call our canines
moon kernels or portents,
but the sentiment
is sharper. the poem
tautology to a bracelet
of crescent dents.
self-portrait: light
shadow, shadow, light.
a plane reflecting
other planes, an edge
biting an edge, biting
an edge, bitten.
the bracelet tautology
to a skyline sans sky,
one wedge of evening
held in your periphery.
i press my fingers
into a warm glass throat.
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 12:12 AM UTC
i can't know
my artifice of kneeling doesn't change the fact
at Delphi
gasping words
from wide silken eyes
mating doubt and trust
in seizmic gnosis
fissures claim
even olive sky
freefalling streambeds
tossed
chests of gold heave
spill with ******* lovers
mingle debts
and portents laid
denuded
over cool marble
shimmered under earthquake suns
===
ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα
Hèn oîda hóti oudèn oîda
"I know one thing, that I know nothing"
Socrates, paraphrased from Plato's Apology.
===
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 9:11 AM UTC
In the night garden,
Brambles scar at heart and mind,
The roses bear no thorns,
The buddlea, no butterflies borne,
Metamorphosis into night light moths,
Beetles become fireflies,
Dancing round the fairy heads,
The ***** screams,
Portraying portents of doom,
While creeping beneath the glowing moon,
Dry brush wood cracks at winds intent,
Hedgehog spikes,
Tom cat hunts,
Queen lady calls,
She is his feline lover,
One of many,
Ladies in his life,
She'll give him many babies,
Never be his wife.
Garden of darkness a surreal place,
In daylight she will hide her face,
No nightmare in her freedom space!
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Jun 26, 2013
Jun 26, 2013 at 8:26 AM UTC
Lately I have had a feeling of a sense of deep foreboding in the air,
every time I stop to pause, to think, I can feel it just lurking there.
An all pervasive feeling that all things are not as they should be,
and I get an anxious sensation that it's effects are not just on me.
Colours of nature seem all faded and the air seems different too,
the sky is somehow much more ominous and appears a paler blue.
Even the birds I see upon their wing seem more skittish everyday,
and I wonder if they feel it too, does a dark fear halt their play?
I sense a tension in the natural order of these once normal things,
and my heart and mind are fearful of what message this all brings.
Like some silent siren wailing or invisible flashing hazard light,
my mind is filled with deepest dread and senses things aren't right.
Far too much time caught up thinking upon the portents that I see,
with each terrifying thought I pray for all, to hope that its just me.
Jul 24, 2022
Jul 24, 2022 at 9:45 PM UTC
A governess, a guardian of the young, so known and dear as to be called “Mother” and a noblewoman, just barely 12 by age, named Portia, sit talking as the sun sets the stage for a cool, cloudless night.
“Mother, who invented candlelight and the slow, delicate brush of lips?”
“Some rakish boy, pawning his experience for present pleasure, no doubt.”
“Say true, Mother. If you were a man, would you find this common body worthy of love?”
“You show no blemish child, and display a certain bony voluptuousness - I should think.”
The governess begins to comb and braid Portia’s hair for sleep.
“I saw Portincio this morning, in the courtyard.”
“The boy from Padua?”
“He’s a man Mother, and his cast portents a passion so sweet - it shakes my very frame.”
Mother chuckles, “Even hopeless birds sing in cages.”
“I am not hopeless!” Portia writhes angrily, like a snake about to strike but mother calms her.
“Shoo, shoo, now,” Mother purrs, brushing all the more gently, “I meant nothing of it.” After a moment, she continues, “Love is more than coquetry, little one, and it soon passes - like a parade, or a rash. For now, be happy, you are like the chaste stars - unreachable.”
Feb 23, 2023
Feb 23, 2023 at 10:44 PM UTC
Azure panels fade; shed golden mane
Black, celestial portents mail links chain
Windows of heaven shaded darker strain
Foggy panes availing beams do disdain
Billowing, gray folds gilded tapestry doth stain
Burgeoning spouts brackish bile to drain
Reverberating drums strike dolesome refrain
Streaking bolts o'er tumult wax then wane
An eerie whistle howls announcing the careening train
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 5, 2012 at 11:28 AM UTC
~
~ for my knowing friends~
~~~
so simple the notion,
that healing's potent potions
are non-directional portents
coming at you
like a Bob Dylan, Avettt Brothers,
rhythm and rhyme,
tunes injected from the outside knowing,
from the first time
that they were residing inside,
all the time
in, on and under the skin
the conflicted battle rages between the
coursing forces of
I believe
and the low grade infection, incurable return of
faithless disbelief and irreconcilability
a parental entry knowing,
despite different routes of administration,
there is no pharmacology for a limb lost,
any prosthesis healing supplanted
from without,
never achieves
anything approaching next to normal
*but from within,
the heart can heal itself,
trying a natural bypass,
doing its imperfect best
to correct the uncorrectable,
resigned to accept the unacceptable*
the slight edge felt from
cutting a garden's new growth for replanting
an act of belief in the future,
witnessing a sunset's nightly color sky's return rebirthing,
knowing, admitting to oneself,
that miraculously better than all ever seen prior are
medicines that come from the outside,
and inward bound daily injections,
they are:
*"healing, from the inside out...
just as it was meant to be!"*
Nov 26, 2016
Nov 26, 2016 at 10:41 AM UTC
With Happiness within and within alone
A thoughtful school Basic Letters declare
Was a Way to cope with this inevit groan
Of Hearts' Glass-Strings perform to Clouds nowhere
Why must I consume my time, Flair Phantom
If my own Fright Events I don't pursue?
The Sage has taught me with Eight Spokes random
Yet still cannot Define that Inner You
To whom your spirit, whose Muse you belong
Which Married Moments your own Clouds rain by
Of Good-Caused Country, Family and Song
To add my Themes which your Merry Smile lies.
They are still Strings, though Glassed these Portents are
Unless I cut them, such Mirage speads far.
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 12:19 AM UTC
i can lose myself in your eyes—
no, actually, that’s not true.
i have an excellent sense of direction
(up down around the contours of
your spine,
between the frantic pulls of
your breath,
across yet through the rise and fall of
your chest;
always with the certainty of
you)
though i do usually become waylaid by
crossways,
intersections,
and boulevards;
by unspoken daydreams,
unseen words,
and misplaced thoughts;
by the
fragile temerity
of an allusion at midnight,
and the
convenient paradoxes of
endless space
and finite time.
but you;
you, i can find.
because though i will never be quite able
to steer myself by
stars, portents, or street signs,
i can feel the way across your fingertips
as surely as any sailor
and where the
stars, portents, or street signs
direct, but do not guide
it is your warmth
that means that i will
never
get lost in your eyes.
because i’ll always be
found in your voice,
and the taste of
your touch.
and while i’ll always have to
carry a map
and still have to
stop three times to
reorient
redirect
and ask for directions,
i’m not too worried.
because lost
is a frame of mind,
and found
is a destination
that I am constantly
leaving and arriving;
an infinite loop
wrapped around
your little finger.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:49 PM UTC
a murmuration of starlings
shivers over an empty parking lot
blue sky emerges from the gloom
and then disappears again
indifferent to my approach, a stray cat
yawns and blinks its copper eyes
grackles gather on the powerlines
in the middle of the day
weeks early, autumn winds
chase leaves down the sidewalks
anxious about the fate of the nation
I search for signs and portents
a wave crests and then is gone
I comfort myself by remembering
that it has always been so
Tom Spencer © 2018
Nov 21, 2018
Nov 21, 2018 at 7:05 AM UTC
In the morning,
they shriek their
arrival with a cry
of effervescent doom
before the dawn
has so much as
shed a sliver
of light into my room
Standing tall,
these birds of black
feathers,
dark and deathly
apparitions
perch upon the pallad
bust of my building
with malevolent
intentions
They stalk my daytime
landscape
with the cunning
of a thief
reminding me,
enticing me
with the chaos
just beneath
I've no chance to
enjoy the daylight
when they cast their
shadows on the ground
These Ravens flock
together silently
as if immune to sound
They are the
Birds of Eventide,
the witnesses of the
****** and derelict
Brash and unsanctified,
no one can hide
from the portents
they predict
And around me,
the people walk unbidden,
hearing not this
beacon's call
These subtle squawks
are voices that talk
on the horrors of The Fall
I listen to their
Eventide prelude,
my soul trembling
at its core
because I can't pretend
that I can't hear
the message anymore...
Mar 24, 2010
Mar 24, 2010 at 5:51 PM UTC
With your eyes closed
By weights of air
Lie still
The heat on the backs of your ears
Stretches far to either side
Extend your tongue to taste the throes
of haste in Summer’s stride.
Loftish palaces float idly by,
Pace prestigious portents in the sky
And from their steps, stumbling down,
A preening wind upon your crown.
Your skin weeps
And you become
A marshland.
Heat-stroked pines o'ercome the air
Heavy insects cry and wail
Wing'ed, they move in slanted dances
To seek the suns neglected veil.
Hale the blossom, unfurl’d gold
Makes you forget that it is old
For nimbly, like deep thought from head
Opened eyes find sweet Summer fled.
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 11:40 PM UTC
baptism
from the clouds
washes away
channelling to the harbour
broken branches
in gutters
leaves strewn
across footpaths
wild urban obstacles
puddles stay
wet socks
umbrella struggles
a moment of teasing
blue drifts to
grey portents
time enough
to clear eaves
unblock drains
prepare for
another cleansing
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 1:51 AM UTC
15 June:
“...its half way in a morning that glistens with slow reminiscences from last night. We find ourselves a respite for the hour, an oasis of sweet temper and our favourite elixir. We sit at the burdened edge; separated by transparency from passing furies; watching with rapt attention and fascination the range of creation displayed before us...We hunt down todays metaphors on clean pages; virginal expanses that congregate with a sublime notion of the art; death; logic; lust and wonder...we span serial glyphs across our vision to prevent a dissolving into the expanse before us; forming borders; signs; structures...Only to be de-constructed again and again; time dissolving; seconds inverting the quantum flux as HereNow paints the Tao over the moment...nothing-everything...we blink in and out; existence define by our presence; the reason and the way forward...delicately; smoothly; succinctly; we pick out secrets from between our worlds; Heartblood squeezed from the cries of angels; the force of supernovas; the very point of transition...again and again the universe spins us. A point – transition-how we create. This secret way. Again and again we play the Fool...again and again we play the Wizard. The tattooed skull of Intimacy grins from the ink on our backs...”
21.8.2010
“...Sunday materialises. Its a smouldering glance across the smoky eternity of a crowded room. A lost sonata barely recognised on faded parchment dusty in a forgotten draw. Its the breeze in the wake of an angels wing. The seconds chip away; each tick a foreign language, the dissonance of grace. We're sitting, hidden, in plain sight, a wayward stop-over; a cafe somewhere on the edge of reason, but the coffees good and the service fast. We watch the people; reading signs and portents in the oblivious expressions; each grin and scowl, each glance, each distant look a codex of requite dreams; a subtle picture puzzle colouring destiny’s reverie. We join the dots. The music over the cafes soundsystem; beats with inevitable consequence. We feel deep into the heart of Journey and Moment...”
Jun 17, 2010
Jun 17, 2010 at 8:33 AM UTC
callused hands over buzzing metal string,
fingers practiced, deft and adept.
i slept there and woke in a memory—
temporary and beautiful and gone.
a song someone played for me once,
over and done, the lone melody of a heartbroken nostalgia.
the past wraps its arms around me—
history speaks— history lies— history repeats.
keep it inhuman, abstract and formless.
best not to give the past a face
or a place to hide in your heart.
they're the parts you'll miss:
kisses, laughter, drowning in a borrowed sweater.
better to leave it all as loosely connected events,
portents of later misfortune, not a room i can't leave,
a grief grappling with the transience of intimacy.
history can't hurt me— the past is dead—
but that song still gets stuck in my head
Mar 28, 2022
Mar 28, 2022 at 7:08 PM UTC
A gashed and gaping pumpkin burns
emits a rancid rotting odor
greeting pre-diabetic heathens
Black cats and screeching bats
startle the littlest of the munchers
in a city decayed by blood and rust
A bridge tilted by a millimeter
lords over rushing river and splinters
struts in metal fashion before the storm
Gladiators hallucinate between concussions
Lions and christians and furry huns
leap from alleys and dumpsters and gutters
Bands play and march and dazzle
rippling brass and silver on a field
before brazen cheering plebians
Hear the song of a thousand dreams
a thousand shouts singing out of key
uncertainty brings the cacophony down an octave
Presidential box matches the drapes
Imagination finishes the vision of a short
master stroke invoking the myth of the tyrant
Setting sun on an amateur showdown
in the shadow of an errant arc
choking the last gasps from a senile warrior
Passing boredom in a controlled climate
Cringes in a backseat with no batteries
dying echoes of "are we there yet...."
Babies and mental patients despair
over loss of closeness and peace
disappeared into dystopic hysteria
Hobbits and goblins and Big Bird frolics
in a sanitized concept of Hell
among treats and smiles and winks
Oct 9, 2016
Oct 9, 2016 at 7:24 PM UTC
Portents
Just a stamp an impression briefly emboldened formed in darker green you are but the portal of dreams
Telling my heart of those things that can and should be the burgeoning of vast meaningful wonders that
Shimmer long ago they were told in storybooks now they are fused as electrical force burning singing
The mind allegory befits you with your stage here you are the perpetual page desire strikes stone the
Emerging statue reaches untold depths reveals sacred expression the many sides of you that are the
Yearnings of dreams that seek total enrichment against the back drop of insidious want and lack a smile
That creates worlds with borders do not the trees bow to such glory that your eyes alone hold every
Man holds these immortal conceptions gem studded treasures nothing has this form can anything be
Captured given life that possesses the very essence of laughter the flow of life bursting the enthralling
Wisp that from silence forges lives with volumes’ language a bell tolls with no sweeter sound it is love
Beheld and known from the poverty of human life riches explode within common steps divine rewards
Beckon from every pore we look and see the self centered interest that disdains all things when at arms
Length only through imagination can you delve into the reality of your world a beggar truly is a king
With all that lies before him and if so then common man is a participant of God if only we could reach
Out and unfurl the gold instead of a simple down trodden prisoner we would be deliriously happy if we
Could only see the true and indescribable carpet that flows ever so wide in each of our lives it is only the
Foretelling of even a greater and more noble future that awaits
Jul 7, 2012
Jul 7, 2012 at 3:04 AM UTC
She arises from sorrow's casket,
trussed up in a dusky wedding dress,
yellow tinted cushions below her,
supposedly,
supporting her deathly pallid head,
somewhat discoloured,
looking rather distressed.
carnations and confetti unfurled,
sprinkled maybe as pretty portents abound,
a warning,
that maybe true love ne'er lasts.
Her man,
he sits longingly,
enduring his pain,
perhaps as a tragic hero,
awaiting,
almost to take the blame,
the blame for her demise,
beside her he crouches,
as she's sat,
upon her marble slab,
And yet again,
she rises,
yawning,
stretching out her immortal warning,
Poplars dress the mausoleum,
behind the greying pillars,
to the right,
a gathering,
a crowd small in number,
most impressed,
by non-committal of death's distress,
and her lover,
he sits,
and sits some more,
looking longingly into death's dark eyes,
while patiently awaiting her final tragic goodbye.
(c) Livvi
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 5:44 PM UTC