"prate" poems
Blow, blow your trumpets till they crack,
Ye little men of little souls!
And bid them huddle at your back -
Gold-sucking leeches, shoals on shoals!
Fill all the air with hungry wails -
"Reward us, ere we think or write!
Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails
To sate the swinish appetite!"
And, where great Plato paced serene,
Or Newton paused with wistful eye,
Rush to the chace with hoofs unclean
And Babel-clamour of the sty
Be yours the pay: be theirs the praise:
We will not rob them of their due,
Nor vex the ghosts of other days
By naming them along with you.
They sought and found undying fame:
They toiled not for reward nor thanks:
Their cheeks are hot with honest shame
For you, the modern mountebanks!
Who preach of Justice - plead with tears
That Love and Mercy should abound -
While marking with complacent ears
The moaning of some tortured hound:
Who prate of Wisdom - nay, forbear,
Lest Wisdom turn on you in wrath,
Trampling, with heel that will not spare,
The vermin that beset her path!
Go, throng each other's drawing-rooms,
Ye idols of a petty clique:
Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,
And make your penny-trumpets squeak.
Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds
Of learning from a nobler time,
And oil each other's little heads
With mutual Flattery's golden slime:
And when the topmost height ye gain,
And stand in Glory's ether clear,
And grasp the prize of all your pain -
So many hundred pounds a year -
Then let Fame's banner be unfurled!
Sing Paeans for a victory won!
Ye tapers, that would light the world,
And cast a shadow on the Sun -
Who still shall pour His rays sublime,
One crystal flood, from East to West,
When YE have burned your little time
And feebly flickered into rest!
3k
7/12/12 16:25pm
At what price does man find favour with God?
Down through the roiling clouds, from heavenly heights to earthly clay,
where scribes had written scrolls of doctrines;
down through old crumbling architraves, temples of cold ideals,
man spawned the Vengeful Word.
With rage of angels,
like effigies of gods, there sprang forth lords and hypocrites;
all claimed to speak for God.
Then, in the maelstrom,
came genocide of innocents, and hellfire fell like rain.
When does a tower become too tall for God?
Out of a clear blue sky came silver harbingers of doom,
where men were writing drafts and spreadsheets;
now crumbling down around them, swathed in hate-begotten fire;
spawned from a vengeful god.
No mortal angels
could save the ones who perished, caught above the line of flame;
while some below survived.
Yet, in the chaos,
sworn enemies in faith came out to save each other's fall.
At what price can man enter Paradise?
High above the minarets, the veiled dome of the sky
students look up with wistful longing;
yearning to be good radicals and cross the lines of fire
to reap heaven's reward.
Hate's vengeful angels
pretenders to the throne of God take many shapes and forms,
while moderates stay quiet;
and with their silence
give passive leave for lunatics to prate at heaven's door.
Dec 7, 2012
Dec 7, 2012 at 11:28 AM UTC
You don’t have to wave your country’s flag;
Nor do you have to boast and brag
That yours is the best country on earth—
Whether or not it’s the land of your birth—
To be a patriot.
There’s no need to brandish your weapons to show
That you have your rights that you’ll never forgo;
Nor do you have to copy the ones
Who feel the need for an arsenal of guns
To be a patriot.
You don’t have to heed everything you are told,
Fear seeking truths that your leaders withhold,
Or forget that in your laws there’s a reason
That public dissent’s not the same thing as treason
To be a patriot.
You don’t have to feel that the government is right
To force young men and women to fight
In wars that profit the War Machine--
And which you in your heart know are obscene--
To be a patriot.
There’s no need to always bewail and prate
On the separation of church and state
Or let the troublemakers upset you
By saying the government’s out to get you
To prove you’re a patriot.
But caring about the poor and the needy;
Wanting to have, without being greedy;
Feeling concern for the rights of ALL;
And helping others up when they fall:
That's being a patriot!
- by Bob B
Oct 4, 2016
Oct 4, 2016 at 3:19 PM UTC
Call me by another name.
Call me waspish,
or boyish,
or fountain-mouthed.
Prate about the crooked,
curved curls of my red-ribbon tongue.
Whisper myths down spidered-ice hallways
about the melted wax love games
fixed between dust-dressed candlesticks,
and the unfaithful rumors
of wine-stained table cloths.
Call me by another name.
Call me button-eyed,
and hollow,
and brittle-garden crucified;
Bind my face with burlap
and replace my spine with
a wood-splintering post;
dry my veins gold
so that my flannel fetters in
the tornado-dry breath
of fraying hay.
I'll fight off autumn winds and
the gossip of crows.
Don't fuse my footsteps to the echos
of Lightning Bearers and Stilt-legged Shadows;
Fasten my shoelaces to the
anchor dreams of drowning cannonballs
where I will only spell stories
with the sharp skin of coral reefs.
Call me by another name.
Call me typewriter-toothed,
or backwash,
or eight-legged.
Just prescribe me a name
that I can live up to.
Feb 14, 2011
Feb 14, 2011 at 10:58 PM UTC
65
I can’t tell you—but you feel it—
Nor can you tell me—
Saints, with ravished slate and pencil
Solve our April Day!
Sweeter than a vanished frolic
From a vanished green!
Swifter than the hoofs of Horsemen
Round a Ledge of dream!
Modest, let us walk among it
With our faces veiled—
As they say polite Archangels
Do in meeting God!
Not for me—to prate about it!
Not for you—to say
To some fashionable Lady
“Charming April Day”!
Rather—Heaven’s “Peter Parley”!
By which Children slow
To sublimer Recitation
Are prepared to go!
1.9k
171
Wait till the Majesty of Death
Invests so mean a brow!
Almost a powdered Footman
Might dare to touch it now!
Wait till in Everlasting Robes
That Democrat is dressed,
Then prate about “Preferment”—
And “Station,” and the rest!
Around this quiet Courtier
Obsequious Angels wait!
Full royal is his Retinue!
Full purple is his state!
A Lord, might dare to lift the Hat
To such a Modest Clay
Since that My Lord, “the Lord of Lords”
Receives unblushingly!
1.8k
489
We pray—to Heaven—
We prate—of Heaven—
Relate—when Neighbors die—
At what o’clock to heaven—they fled—
Who saw them—Wherefore fly?
Is Heaven a Place—a Sky—a Tree?
Location’s narrow way is for Ourselves—
Unto the Dead
There’s no Geography—
But State—Endowal—Focus—
Where—Omnipresence—fly?
1.6k
My work site is climate controlled,
No Pigeons threaten my peace.
Of all of my gigs, this one is the best,
no acid rain scours my cheeks.
Yes, it is boring at times;
stuck in the Louvre, night and day,
but, as I’m a creature of Marble,
I cannot run outside and play.
Instead I’ve become an observer
of the tourists who whisper and gawk.
That girl with nice ***** is from Paris,
that fat little guys’ from New Yawk.
I pose for their pictures for free
as they snap up some memories for home.
My maker, long dead, was the master
who painted those frescoes in Rome.
Its hard to believe that the heirs
of the Renaissance men of my time
have gotten so fat and complacent,
gorging on fast food and cheap wine.
pig like are their fat chubby faces.
They prate like some fatuous child.
They are, compared to their forebears,
like butterball turkeys to wild.
Mar 30, 2012
Mar 30, 2012 at 7:54 AM UTC
Troll be leery, troll beware
Troll we'll find Thee anywhere
In the toilet, neath the stairs
Anywhere Thee's rancor glares
Troll be leery, troll beware
Troll we'll find Thee anywhere
Laughing at Thee's haughty airs,
Boastful words… but no one cares
Troll be leery, troll beware
Troll we'll find Thee anywhere
Faced with words where talent flares,
Leaves Thee startled, unawares
Troll be leery, troll beware
Troll we'll find Thee anywhere
In Thee prate or in Thee prayers
Be forewarned, our patience wears
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 4:17 AM UTC
Get up and dance
Put on those moccasins that make you move from out in France
Into the Indies then Polynesian isles.
Pour the green skies upon those frozen and dried out.
Bring gratitude to those whom frequently pout
And the mission to gain commission
How the mantras from mamas mouth
Shoot from the sky.
So sly the way we will slip into the nostalgic reminisce
Lights on the red carpet
And the set of lies
Are we doing this?
We don't mention How Buddha ******
Budapest in the name of the most auromatheraputic
And orginally
tell the Chinese nike labourers
who do this.
Though they suit me,
I resuit this with prudent force for those law benders
Of the b.a.r.
We will cough on tough tycoons and yet bow to stars.
Oh my legend, how far have we looked and have we come
Jumping out of the Nintendo Nes(t)
We have entertained our self enough
We've won son.
But find me lagging on a wooden broom
Brimming on the outskirts of your psyche
Just when you thought
Sike you didn't not cite me.
Please bibliograph my flight plan or pattern
And as you gaze upon the moon I make my second meander on Saturn
The orbit
In finding sudden satisfaction with norbit
I've asked. How bliss is ignorance?
We blend all the blinding lights of the prism and still white and ****
Siss
Disdain on dose dat ain't domestic
Still ******* kicking and
My legs are there to test this
Theory
and jeering with slack
I'm looking back.
I fear the peers of tired whites and blacks
Those that act that they have nothing to loose
By continually hitting the snooze
Oh we will leave you like leaves grounded in the grooves
These four leaf clues
Clovers, slipping out of my palms
Mark you like wolverines claws
Like jar heads
Jumpin in to the jabber jagged jaw of jaws
Subservient marine.
Prate in the truth of those words until you(they) know just what they mean.
Ya seen?
Good?
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 10:32 AM UTC
Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.
Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
Is not the day which God’s word promiseth
To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
Or thou assure him of his goal? God’s breath
Even at the moment haply quickeneth
The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.
1k
Nicotine and black ink stain my fingers
confirming all I have done, do and will
in steadfast proof of spent Time that lingers
ever and anon upon new hours still,
and still this world hath nothing to compare
nor ever hath with someone such as thee
as Time doth prove the burden that I bear
thru' stainèd fingers of mine poetry,
for Time itself will vouchsafe mine labour
with honest judgement of fair-reckon'd Time,
while tongues that prate and cut like a sabre
shall be mute with thy beauty in mine rhyme —
vouchsafe me this, the sweetest sort of task
to prove thy worth is all that I do ask.
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 5:50 PM UTC
my moat wet eyes
focus free
with the manner of a poisoned animal
those feedy gemini apertures
fidget inward
upon an open wounded view
unclothing a filmy slick
so very faithful to the dead
ripples cross my bed of sails
i set pale
in my atrophy
each signal blunted
i am greatly wilted
sat planted
lazily hazed
a vehicle scuppered
riddles prate at my bed of veils
i set sail
in atrophy
each signal bloated
fully unloaded
a barrow at your feet
i truly wither
what power may you beam my form ?
i'm frail in heart
atrophy
between stars and the sea
a failed flicker of no pity curses
a matrimony
all signals mar
and spar out blotting
a missile
misguided ?
; it preys on my trail
misdeeds played a trophy
a lit penalty
i am most deletable
piteous
i pray for the guff
to raise my head
filled to the tax of my atrophy
dissipated
oh mother of pigment
lovingly wigged murderer of woes
why can't we abstain from human directive ?
forever foaming something criminal
flunked corrective of the species rudder
idle by into an atrophy
a perishing menace
pungent
- fade out
Jul 27, 2021
Jul 27, 2021 at 10:32 PM UTC
The pride to my shame.
The fuel of my flame.
If life is a target,
Then you are my aim.
The calm to my storm.
The cool to my warm.
Together we fight,
Against all the norm.
You stand beside me,
And you help me see,
The infinite choices,
Of what I could be.
I'll stand beside you,
Happy or blue.
A living reminder,
Of all that is true.
You see on my face,
The pain and disgrace.
The remnants of guilt,
That I tried to erase.
In you, I confide.
All ******** aside.
When I am with you,
There's nothing to hide.
I see in your eyes,
Beneath the disguise,
The purest of hearts,
In fear of demise.
There's nothing to fear.
Though it isn't always clear,
Should you stray from your path,
I will always be near.
Our friendship is fate.
From the way that we prate,
I can tell our connection,
Will never abate.
Our lives, they conflate.
Our wisdoms equate.
Imagine the wonders,
That we can create.
The void has been filled.
This friendship, we build.
We look to the future;
The both of us thrilled.
So here I will stand,
In reach of your hand.
The greatest of friends,
In all of the land.
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 2:37 AM UTC
Proust kept a log of his untidy mind
inviting readers in to sink, or swim
some find their thoughts are much of the same kind
some feel it's all particular to him
great literature ought to resonate
but still meets a diversity of taste
those hawthorn blossoms of his endless prate
some readers find a shapeless verbose waste
a shorter form fits my attention span
of seventy iambs in rhyming verse
within a reader's mind I dare hope can
evoke a self-consistent universe
a monument to years spent pent in bed
Marcel's rich life was mostly in his head
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 5:12 PM UTC
Gods will rise and fall
And many suns may set,
but man will never get
loose from hatred's thrall.
so even if he shouts
his love and inner peace,
man will never cease
to have his hateful doubts...
arguments not needed
for this statement poem,
as hatred is yet flowing
so rhymes can be conceited.
Because man should hate,
as he has always done,
When fear and pride have won
this poetic prate.
Jul 24, 2017
Jul 24, 2017 at 8:22 AM UTC
Away into the future in days we don’t know
Lived a girl with her dear mother’s wife
And abandoned traditions of decades ago
Made no impact on their joinéd life
The profane was normal and it was expected
That gender give no weight to love
And long dead protesters long since had defected
Though they lose peace long sought from above
But this girl was among those chagrined by their fate
Doomed to carouse in shades of grey
For no matter the forward evolution’ry prate
This upon her good conscience would weigh:
She cared not for caresses of sexes together
But feigned the feeling for fear of misuse
Resignéd to normalcy’s smothering tether
For her one-sided view was to others obtuse
They did not comprehend that her dead eyes did gaze
Upon silhouette man for whom her slow heart beat
And sat quietly she for a number of days
With contemplative question, enamor discreet
‘Till her lips formed the answer with truth late in coming
With sentences all but forbidden
Breaking the chains of society’s numbing
Sympathies quoted unhinged, unhidden
A love once forbidden by color of skin
A love once forsaken for money or pleasure
No more to be bound by the horror of sin
She opened to her mouth to declare without measure:
Affection is lessened by norm that encumbers
To love someone mirroring their ways with thine
It may disgrace you that I do not count in your numbers
I’m in love with a differing gender from mine
And lo that day not a jest was utter’d
To the maiden now soaring with spirit unshuttered.
Mar 27, 2015
Mar 27, 2015 at 1:54 PM UTC
I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly to prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned.
Since from myself another self I turned.
My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die, and so forget what love e’er meant.
- Queen Elizabeth I
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 3:46 PM UTC
I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.
My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.
Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.
~ Elizabeth I
Oct 14, 2015
Oct 14, 2015 at 10:02 AM UTC
I am lost in thought
Some one will have to catch me up later..
Sure, I’ll pretend I was listening with a hmmm mmm here and a nod there..
but really, I’m on a journey...
a retreat for my mind ...
from this mundane conversation...
so I’ll treat myself with this little trip...
just about riiiiight here* in this very one-sided “exchange”
so boring I may as well be elsewhere...
anywhere but here...
you prate on and on...
self-absorbed, as am I...
So preoccupied with your chatter...
you don’t even seem to notice that you’re talking to yourself
Jul 9, 2020
Jul 9, 2020 at 4:30 PM UTC
My words won't seem to flow of late,
a couple lines then rhymes deflate.
Too soon they stumble, thoughts abate.
From mouth does tumble basest prate.
Maybe whiskey, swallowed straight,
or potent herb, consumed in weight
will end this twisted, tragic state
of yearning pen, without will to sate.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 11:51 PM UTC
The deep forest calls out,
In the tenderness of the leaves
What an illusion is involved.
The murmur of dried leaves
Blow in which tune,
Hijal, tamal, in the shade of shawl
Called away in a remote place.
Curved narrow paths
Merged into an unknown border,
Green forest surrounded by shade
Prate by prying.
The dew of the grass wraps around the feet
Still walking randomly,
The rainbow came and filled my heart
I want to return to her embrace.
Jun 1, 2022
Jun 1, 2022 at 11:07 PM UTC
All of life is dead and the Sun has set.
Wet is the battlefield with blood after the brawl.
Stenches of death and sweat from both sides,
divides and drenches the trenches.
Sounds echo eerily quiet;
quite loud and profound.
All is for naught, as the vultures of the President descend.
The celadon leader smiles as he looks upon his ****** empire.
His vicious hunger is never fulfilled and his smaragdine iniquity smothers.
He wants, no, needs more; a never-sated, rapacious desire.
A broken country built on the backs and deaths of others;
evermore he wants and he wants evermore.
An incessant life drowned in cupidity and submerged in green,
but he is never jaded. He is a ***** emerald without valor.
His unclean desire for money recklessly expands as a deep ravine.
Avarice trumps the morals,
while he spreads a pestilential malignancy through the air.
The sacred blood of innocents binds together his laurels.
But the need for greed is exponential and blinds him to his error.
The mindless masses amass themselves at his mere feet,
but his mere feats only sum to immense ignorance and hate.
As he continues to stand for nothing but hypocrisy,
and his sycophants continue to vacuously prate.
It is a lesson for us all as a warning for our souls.
Covetousness is a viridian plague with no cure.
He corrupts spirits and gains unrighteous power from the polls.
But he is no leader, he’s only a false savior siphoning from the poor.
May 29, 2020
May 29, 2020 at 9:31 PM UTC
In him inexplicably mix’d appear’d
Much to be lov’d and hated, sought and fear’d.
Opinion varying o’er his hidden lot,
In praise or railing ne’er his name forgot;
His silence form’d a theme for others’ prate;
They guess’d–they gaz’d–they fain would know his fate.
What had he been? what was he, thus unknown,
Who walk’d their world, his lineage only known?
A hater of his kind? yet some would say,
With them he could seem gay amidst the gay;
But own’d that smile, if oft observ’d and near,
Wan’d in its mirth and wither’d to a sneer;
That smile might reach his lip but pass’d not by,
None e’er could trace its laughter to his eye.
Yet there was softness too in his regard,
At times, a heart as not by nature hard,
But once perceiv’d, his spirit seem’d to chide
Such weakness as unworthy of its pride,
And steel’d itself, as scorning to redeem
One doubt from others’ half withheld esteem;
In self-inflicted penance of a breast
Which tenderness might once have wrung from rest;
In vigilance of grief that would compel
The soul to hate for having lov’d too well.
May 3, 2021
May 3, 2021 at 4:40 AM UTC