"pungence" poems
You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of out-lived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colours.
My vigour is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.
3.3k
Ditch diggers don't write poems -
As if there might be found
A single thought profound
Amid the mud they go in;
The pungence in essence released
From trees' roots that are severed
Is never fragrant like lilacs,
And their labor is of purpose,
That dirt removed by aching backs -
Gashed earth becomes the grave
In which our sins can be hidden;
Tomorrow ditches will be filled in,
Restoring peace which land craves,
The simple laborer's work done.
Ditch diggers don't write poetry -
Palms calloused in pick and *****
Too rough when art 's to be made,
Remain convinced by sophistry
They've no true claim to a pen.
Clods of clay always remain
Adhered to heels of workmen's boots,
Becoming my life's defining metaphor.
So we forgo more ethereal pursuits,
Though forever treasuring sweetness
Flowed over soil of our dank holes,
Loving breaths exhaled from souls,
Floral kisses blown across distance.
Apr 24, 2010
Apr 24, 2010 at 7:29 PM UTC
A gentle pungence of the nutmeg
Burns the hands that dwell in its ashes
Sprinkle generously, lest you want the
concoction, to turn out bland.
Yet, how would bland be? A curry.
Dressed in an assortment of spices,
As, Cardamoms and Peppercorns and
Cinnamons and Aniseeed_ Do add a
bay leaf as you temper the potion
to a base.
It is joy, manifold_ flavours not just in
conclusion but odyssey of the process.
It is joy, unbound, creation nienté
could bring about such happiness !
Joy of the 'Kitchen Wizard' is
in his pots and potions found !
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 2:54 PM UTC
I buried you in the backyard of my soul
In self defense I sang a requiem,
I theorized- what harm could do a hole
If dug by me and filled in at the end?
I held your funeral, mourned cold at your grave.
I sat vigil until the morning light.
And my heart I hardened, should it have forgave
Your absence and distraction, dead as night.
I urged the moss to swallow up the stone
Which said, "Here lies another lightning strike."-
The newness of the wound couldn't condone
The pungence of the churned up soil's bite.
And once the grass had taken, loosely, root,
And from the corner of one's eye the place looked old,
I hurried by, each day and night, a mute-
To make it old my heart I would have sold.
But no matter how stoic I try to be
I find that in my love of you I dwell.
Perhaps I shouldn't've looked so tenderly
Upon your cold face as the spades of soil fell.
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 10:32 AM UTC
for the girl with vines of lilac encircling her ribs,
like the ivy on the turrets of her castle;
she, with her gentle smiles and gentler hands,
walks confident, not proud,
speaks to be heard, not loud.
you've walked her floors and ran your fingers
through the tapestries she weaves
in the loose braids of her hair.
you kiss the hand of a princess,
and step on the toes of a queen.
for the girl whose elegance
knows more of the growing season,
than it sees of the green.
spends her love to grant you yours,
shares her wealth to make up for yours.
she withers in broad daylight,
her petals soaked in ammonium,
and your fingers reek pungence.
you begged to breathe more life into her,
and now, she suffocates on you.
for the flower girl,
in loving memory.
Jan 11, 2018
Jan 11, 2018 at 12:25 AM UTC
In Washington I smell a rat
It’s Donald Trump, Trump is that
With hair like that he should wear a hat
Or feed his head to a junk yard cat.
The smell’s the stench of hypocracy
It’s the end of our democracy
What’s in store is hard to see
I hope it’s not kleptocracy.
Can’t you smell that putrid stink
each time you see him in printer’s ink?
He’s taking us right to the brink
of what it is, I hate to think.
His are not very pleasant odors
(he lost by several million voters)
and when he speaks, we need decoders
for him and his band of vile freeloaders.
It’s not so pleasant, is his pungence
that fills our airwaves in such abundance
and drives us to such vile repugnance;
can’t we lock him in some dungeons?
But by next year I sense the aroma
of voters’ rejection of this melanoma.
We’ll all come out of this our coma
from Maine to far off Oklahoma.
Mar 16, 2017
Mar 16, 2017 at 1:41 PM UTC