"purloined" poems
dear bill,
so sweet of you
to leave behind
a paper jot
for me to find
for ev’ry breakfast
lunch and tea
gone missing since
you married me;
- however -
such wilfulness
I do condemn
each crust and crumb,
each stone and stem,
each potluck plum
purloined at night
to satisfy
your appetite;
this doctor’s wife
has had her fill
of poetry
and bitter pills,
and crumpled drafts
in juicy scrawl
appended to
the icebox door;
your words do not
a meal make
how many more
must I forsake
- meals, that is -
before your page
is fit for press
and I can sup
on more…not less
love, floss
ps dinner’s in the oven, probably
Mar 16, 2022
Mar 16, 2022 at 6:09 PM UTC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Infinity's Mirror by Nat Lipstadt
Two mirrors, set in opposition observe created notional blending,
a reflecting pool of bonding's of unglued, contrary compositions.
Mirror to mirror, his imagery, fuses to Sylvia's images, hers,
faintly recollected, now living face, face to face, with his past insurrections, alters his future visions.
From cold water lake she's drawn, impaled by refracting regrets,
retrieved, drawing her words upon him, an awakening slap to drink,
beloved, tragic magic, infinitely captive. But this old man's tiddlywinks, land-locked words, blunted instruments, needy for release & salvation, are neither silvered or exacting, just stains on a dulled, tarnished brass spittoon, except for the brunt'd bunting of lines across his roughened terrain'd face, black and white, pen and ink etched illustration of howling agitation.
His words worn down, hardened, red faced, purloined speckled pellets, damp to roll on down her rutted, almost ancient, tear streak paths, disbelieved superstitions, sacrificed for one of her living morsels of words.
Man, here to her, pledges allegiance, audaciously defiling her poetic sanctity, a visage endless repeated, delivers her shiny poem-poised countenance, even though no forgiveness from time can a mirror afford for either, from her words, confession born, terrible truths beyond, beyond the finite.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 4:17 PM UTC
His ***********
Purloined my desire
Stole, requested expectations
My boyhood kidnapped and
Fed secrets for other
Purposes
Blue eyes, pieces of
An unsolved jig-saw
Slotted into my need
Such theft, such theft
Such theft, such theft
So generously given.
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 3:12 PM UTC
The apartment hasn’t been cleaned for so long and has housed a depressive in it for the same length of time so that there is a glaze of slime-dirt on the floor, made of dried coffee, hot chocolate, maybe some **** or some spillage from a tube of steroid cream to treat an inflammation that never really goes. The rate of ooze changes?. Clean textiles are piled up on the floor, never having been folded, and mix here and there with ***** practical fatpants that make me look like a geologist and white-white cotton blankets that can be washed on HOT with lots of bleach that I purloined from some mentalhealthfacility. The inbox is full of—is bristling with—remonstrances from Programs for the Nondoer—you haven’t filed, haven’t turnstiled, haven’t had your hologram chip assessed by central CENTRAL intelligence, what is wrong with you. Upon stepping outside there is a beat during which I think maybe somewonder might swirl and buoy but no, just wethumid and ***** sidewalks cruddy and Haitians and quasi-Haitians muttering “taxitaxitaxi” in front of their Gypsy conveyances with their dubious certifications. I should go for a ride in one, a dubious passenger for a dubious palanquin. I tried the library but it was too hot and decrepit and too filled with Books For African-Americans, which always ****** me off; are only African-Americans going to read Wright or Douglass or Brooks? Everyone is overrated, anyway, movies and theater and the moribund beat of commerce, and as the dangerous autos pass, sometimes not running you over, you can see morechange in the pockets of the shareholders of BeePee and Iacocca Coach-Wirx. Any friendliness exhibited seems to contain an underovertone of You’re Not Included Whiteboy White ****** Ghost ***** all archaic names I’ve been almost astounded to be called usually while balancing on tiptoe on some lurching, roaring dieselbus, grinding past off-off-off brand groceries that do a dubious business. While making my police report I wink at a sevenyearold boy and I get a lustrous wink back butalas this is not enough to beat back those slurrycolored brainfazes.
May 8, 2013
May 8, 2013 at 2:09 PM UTC
are you seventeen yet?
have the berries and the shells
stained impossibly
your youthful heart permanent,
have you matured and learned
to end sentences
in question marks?
surely certainty and
alack, its absence,
haunts
all your waking poems,
wonder does your mother know
what you’ve purloined,
stored in you
from her withins?
so young, so much love
oil spilling,
do you wonder about
the depth of the field
you are drilling, extracting -
is the soft supple supply,
so, close to the surface,
endless?
life so far is but a draft.
take copious notes
for the best is yet
and I await patiently
the novella of your
adventures!
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 10:07 AM UTC
he sees one on the branch of his oak,
the other on his picket fence
eight decades he's heard names
of these creatures
one that makes sad songs (though not
a song bird...)
the other known by its color
(not red robin...)
he opens the door and walks
toward them
as if removing distance will erase years
which purloined their names
they fly off, so many eons ahead of his species
which now lives long enough to forget its past
a breed of ape which worships words, and
dreads the loss of them
the mourning dove and cardinal need no
symbols to know to flee this beast
the mere sight of him evokes the
wisdom of the ages in them
wings flap, currents abide, they glide to
another spot to roost
while the old man curses himself for
unknowing their names--cursing and cursed
it seems, are not part of what is forgotten
May 12, 2017
May 12, 2017 at 11:23 PM UTC
we did what we could that night
and a supernal being is ashamed.
this is the drift of thought
in the vast ocean of gilded gold
frothing at the edge of rotund:
giving back a silenced enigma,
spewing the answer in an exhaust
of white rancid smoke
dharma burns plastered to cigarette.
burning and burning, afloat are the high-pouncing embers looking for fleeting shades and dagger-ambulations
of a shadow's swagger in tectonic soiree.
we did what we could that night.
like a flash of lightning at the back
of hoarded hills,
or say, something brutal and brash with
modern sensibilities we never jell —
we come not with softness or life
peering out of our eyes like little girls
serenaded by mad men in the eve of
forlorn nights. we did what we could
and some god cringes, winces away
like the erratic dance of candleflame.
the leviathan black spreads its parasol
and we are no strangers.
when our veraciousness starts to pierce
the veil, the populace should start
to worry of their trapped conditions.
we came here for something:
be it flesh, be it wisdom, be it plain inebriations — we will never flinch
at the squalor of tomorrow's sobering.
keep in mind, kaibigan.
it's all levitation and transcendence.
the darkness wept as the car
groans near the end of its immaterial life.
i flick the last cigarette into the grey-faced pavement.
all oceans drowned,
all shadows burgeoned,
all fires emerged plump,
this silent radio rivers
through the wave of this ephemerality,
the onomatopoeia of strangeness,
the thud
of the senseless head of metal
on the body
the clackety-clack
of hours thereafter!
ayeayeaye! the streets sing no mild
appendage. the solstice is lost
in the length and precision of all things.
bringing ourselves to the brink of absence,
our pallid selves set ablaze, emblazoning
the quick life of matchflame or rumble of
thunder — the steady phoenix of
that night! this is learning
to breathe again, o, what currents purloined in vicious swarth as we keep
this river flowing into our throats,
jamming our souls to compelling music.
remember kaibigan,
it's all levitation and transcendence.
Oct 28, 2015
Oct 28, 2015 at 8:03 AM UTC
-
this page of leaves
blowing smoke of the
burning woman inside her
convenient misery
-
this, her offspring
failure to launch
-
the babes of her
black bossom bugeoning
with brokenness
delinquent
-
now does her pride purloined
of a place In the world
deliver under death
the kindred kindled
blood
-
the substance of her support
now darker . drained
the black lillies
of her bed soon
broken of
spirit
smouldering
-
she wishes the furnace
to burn away
all but
love
-
the world of her nature
still nourishing the
swarthy children of her
caligraphic countinance
forever distracted
and distraught
-
producing naught
but despair
and
d
i
s
a
p
p
e
a
r
i
n
g
i
n
k
soulsurvivor
(C) 2/11/2014
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 1:37 PM UTC
Waking up one morning
It's a normal kind of day
Only there are bulldozers
on their way
It goes this way:
At the end of your driveway
down to the right
in front of the picket fence
The land is graded
a horizontal drill brought in
made to feel at home
You see,
We you me may own the land
But the mineral rights are theirs
A concrete utility structure goes up,
in what do you think?
About three weeks?
Chemicals are shot
horizontally under the land
under the house
to release the gas from the sand
While the ground water
is fearfully shivering
it knows
its days are numbered.
The concrete utility chimney
pouring out chemical smoke
24 hours a day.
The County says,
"What do you expect us to do?"
The State says
***** You "
Cancer clusters
Sick kids
Chemical water tasting very weird
Guess what?
Whether it be our 89,000
189,000 or 889,000 dollar
American dream home
The dog is going to be
taking a **** in the backyard
claiming ownership.
Welcome to LA too
No matter where you are
Every other day
the earth is shaking
buildings tumbling
Dance Dance Dance
Dots on a map
thousands of them
all around us
coming our way.
Better take a drive
next time on talk radio
"Drill baby Drill"
All hail Exxon
Cars love Shell Gasoline
The old USA
******* gas
And it sure ain't nitrous
cars idoling on a stop and go freeway
finding our true purpose
a grounded oil derreck
for the Koch Brothers
He who pays the piper calls the tune
Oh yeah
Drill baby Drill
I'm heading up Highway 101
The Earth hot and *****
for a new life form
Welcome to the new world order
Welcome to the new USA
Purloined, poisoned, polluted
The United Petro States of America.
Hey Hey Hey
Dec 15, 2016
Dec 15, 2016 at 12:27 PM UTC
A slum outside Paris
A cardboard city thrives a place where no one has
to pay the rent and electricity are purloined.
is it impossible for middle -class folk to understand
but the Roma thrive despite living by a city dump
where you dump your trash wash your hand and are
happy to live in a block of flats and house the rules.
Now they want to get rid of this illegal city that cost
nothing to run and need not tramlines. But they are
not like us do not share our values, no they are not
like us the do not deplete the world's resources and
when the last car has stopped the Gypsies will as they
always have done crossing the landscape with their children
women and dogs carried pulled donkeys on ancient carts.
And the man with a wristwatch and finery will offer
them riches for a lift to better times.
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 3:38 AM UTC
12:53am, January 3,2025
New York City
<>
*A Traveler notates these words to my attention, but only because I make myself
a convenient target, for truthfully,
it is addressed to one and all,
to the royalty of:*
We,
*who speake out loud, to all those who ***** these damp woods full of wet words, that spring up overnight, ripe for the plucking, there for the taking, an exacting where & when they did not even exist
the twenty four prior*
These purloined overnight creatures are
white and black
*lettered truffles, like the pages on which we inscribe, the letters raw, exquisitely tasty, shaved, measured in grams, but only when shared with others, in the privacy of our open minds, after being spooned from within us with exquisite care upon the pages that decorate our lives, sprinkled
with great care and cunning*…
*but when consumed, our five senses rage with aromatic pleasured pain, for these letters, so tiny, so powerful, grow only when
combinatory, individual bitty granules,
but when leavened, they enhance, provoke!,
they sauce, the*
flavors of the ordinary
*of our experiences,
creating the extraordinary
when interacting upon
our five robust senses*
*for without the spaces of delineation,
our jumbled words are but the
random jingle jangle of the sounds
of night winds, rustling a tune
pleasant but incomprehensible*
*Here I take your leave,
with the liberty taken
for speaking in all our names
to a Traveler
who so succinctly captures our work,
the glue of our interactive Us,
Our,*
Collective of Individuality
Jan 8, 2025
Jan 8, 2025 at 9:20 AM UTC
my actress, who
sweated blood on Broadway each night
off Broadway too
said, on a long stroll
through Central Park. she was successful
because she did not like herself
on the stage, she proclaimed,
she was never herself, and she fell in love
with every character she portrayed
every script was a better bio
than her own, and the playwrights knew
her better than she knew herself
and when our walk
was curtailed by a downpour, she dragged me
into a crowded cafe
where she knew half the patrons
and the wait staff, and they all knew the different
personas she had owned, on the dry stage
rain now forced her to choose
which selves to keep, and which to lose
while she sipped scalding tea
with me, on a grey wet afternoon,
only hours before she would again be under
the spell of the hot lights,
and read verses from the pens of prophets,
poets--those who purloined her soul for the price
of admission, to a place without self loathing
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 6:17 PM UTC
H-Helping himself to my pieces of treasure
E-Escaping with them at his very own leisure
P-Proper conduct he didn't see fit to follow
I-Instantly skiving off with my creative property
L-Largesse he stowed in his own log hollow
F-Fruits of my mind purloined with impropriety
E-Effectively his action's I now do swallow
R-Round my territory he has a deal of notoriety
S-Sound the bell his track I'll surely follow
M-Mustn't let the old fellow espy my gold mine
Y-Yonder he'll flee with its bright heaps of shine
I-Ill gotten gains he has in his possession
D-Down with the judge's gavel so says the law
E-End his days of taking any possession
A-Astute laws have sentenced his tut tut paws
S-Shine from my work back in my possession
Apr 10, 2013
Apr 10, 2013 at 11:36 PM UTC
One look at her and I begin
to wonder
what is hiding there?
Is it the colours in her skin
the curls in her hair
the look in her eye
as she glances far and wide
Beyond the scope of
this old camera lens
no amount of effort
is taken to account
pinks, blues and blacks
all have the same impact
Her stare infectious
Her eyes so telling
Her smile whispers stories
of all those saints and sinners
Golds reflect and clash
with the studios bright lights
her eyes are those same sunbeams
her body burning them to the ground
Look her in the eye
studying her face
perfection is muted
another word needed
to replace a name
I wish to give her
Muse
Lacan brought to us
the concept of the gaze
for how shall she see herself?
Like a child's first glance?
Alice's long stare?
or is she simply oblivious
to the beauty she exudes.
© Sia Jane
----
*The narration, in fact, doubles the drama
with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible.*
Jacques Lacan
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 9:01 AM UTC
She was a razor
a transmission
a delicious purloined proscription
An upper
a roofie
I want a cup
of her ashes
in my pocket
She was a legend
a messiah
a golden lover
and a silver pariah
When I think
of all the faces I carved
into the soft surface
of my desire
I cannot decide
if it was her claws
or her prose
that made me ****
back my saliva
Even if she were to die tommorrow
she would always be
the soul survivor.
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
Lord Elgin of Britain, that perfidious thief,
robbed Greece of its heritage, its marble reliefs.
The Parthenon stripped of its decorative stone,
a victim of rapine stands forlorn and alone.
Phidias’ statues, rendered so fine,
Are lifelike and glorious for now and all time.
The British museum houses the collection
Which Elgin purloined while avoiding detection.
Greece, more than most, has been robbed of its past
By ephemeral empires who thought they would last.
Now that the sun sets on the imperial throne
Isn’t it time that those Marbles went home?
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC
who among us has not purloined
the bread, blue with mold
or fresh with sweet scent?
some have even filched the meat,
the flesh there for the taking,
they rapaciously presume
who can claim the air they breathe
is theirs, fetid foul or crisp
with white mountain’s bite?
who is not ripe with prevarications,
necessary fictions to make it through
all these imperfect days?
who is innocent of these cryptic crimes?
yet bars and chains are the bounty
of the chosen ****** the curse
of a wretched few
while the rest of us plunder and slaughter
and blindly wash the blood away
with stolen water
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 5:35 PM UTC
there was once “a simple desultory philippic”
witty words put to music by men of another age
but now only lanky lyrics on a soundless page
that which hath power to soothe the savage breast
has long ago been mournfully put to rest
by a cursed plague visited upon my ear
that purloined much I rightfully revere
so for those who can still hear sweet melody
do not forget to bow down thankfully
for the syncopated sounds that still delight
and other treasures beyond our sight
Aug 27, 2012
Aug 27, 2012 at 10:38 PM UTC
Kicking at the maggots knotted into this rotted steed
Calcified in a crucible purloined out of greed.
Oct 3, 2015
Oct 3, 2015 at 4:12 AM UTC
Purloined pleasures
Of unsolved paleness
Was pleasing, Per laughed
When he spread me
A wish bone
I enjoy his fun
Mar 7, 2012
Mar 7, 2012 at 4:33 PM UTC
When dh'a reaper come a
knockin on ma’h door
tell him a'h gone to bogator,
if he want ma’h ***
he'll have to wait,
a'h goda liddle more life
to satiate,
A’h sold ma’h soul
to be-el-zebub
for a cute liddle ***
an' a tummy rub,
So a'h guess ah’ll be
a headin d udder way
an' widda old nicks ******
ah'ma gonna play,
Now be-el-zebub said to me dat time
" sign dis boy your *** be mine, !!"
a’h know dis now, a’hn a’h knew dat den,
he purloined ma’h soul whidda fountain pen,
so lawd oh lawd please hear m'ah plea
take pity m'ah lawd on poor auld me,
deliver m'ah soul to da' place above
n tell be-el-zebub dat' he can shove !!
Nov 23, 2013
Nov 23, 2013 at 11:35 AM UTC
The master copyist hath made an appearance
Without being given the proper clearance
He's just blown in at another poetry site
One bets he'll be at his usual caper
Plagiarizing poet's work on his paper
Twas noted that he'd come to have a look
For poems which he could put in his own nook
None can be credited as a true write
This chap is serial at knocking things off
No wonder we should of him verily scoff
As bold as a brass **** he was stealing
Slipping under the radar's scope to ******
He's made that locale his casual patch
Hope he hasn't purloined those poet's writing
Nov 8, 2014
Nov 8, 2014 at 10:15 PM UTC
We want things to be easy
I look back on time and wonder
How could they be so strong
While we carry signs and grumble?
The world is a museum of invention
Yet we grow weaker each day
We have built our shelter
But our minds have gone astray
Once upon a time
A man looked to the West
He only needed freedom
And without he could never rest
His spirit arrived before him
With its silent call of courage
He never worried about time
In dust his dreams would forage
He didn’t know the words
Entitlement or welfare state
He had a horse and wagon
In the back rode his fate
He broke the hour glass
And kept moving on
No pause for help
Only his word to rely upon
No comfort in the cold
Or parsing words of nuance
Instead they tilled the land
And became men of renaissance
The pictures of old wise men
And words without a face
I wonder if they would laugh
At the state of the human race
A story teller of the past
Who lives on as we complain
An odd looking sort
By the name of Twain
Another painted a ceiling
While laying on his back
For years he toiled
With the artistry we lack
These are my heroes
Not a man screaming in the streets
Demanding more leisure
He is no better than the elites
They lived apart in distance and time
With years between shared utterances
They lived without going viral
Only hoping for history’s remembrances
As grown men show you their palms
Demanding them to be filled with coin
Every result to be guaranteed
The fruits of another to be purloined
Can you see what has happened?
Can you see the rising tide?
No man who makes demands
Can ever be denied
A politician’s waste
In the name of a good deed
Today we fired another
Tell me… where will it lead?
May 7, 2012
May 7, 2012 at 5:59 PM UTC
My mind says no;
wanes to let go,
but then again,
when have I ever listened to it.
My heart says yes;
unbeknownst to myself.
Washed ashore, brawny yet bruised.
A casualty of love;
Of our own misunderstandings,
purloined around our lover's lungs,
in forlorn hope to find ourselves
in comet tails
and wisps of smoke.
We will pick ourselves up
and break in waves,
again.
May 13, 2017
May 13, 2017 at 1:56 AM UTC
*Blame placed be seen worthwhile
Dearth of substance, forthright style.
A lightness of touch with sledge hammer grace
Paradoxically, artful, smiling face….
Anxiously generous yet whimsically mean
Frailness-ness sought ….now secretly seen,
Quandary thrown to Iraq's lost trust
Now loudly scowls with Mozart’s bust.
For be he rich or be he poor
This secret’s worth is out the door
For they, from whom this thing be kept,
Conveniently from this room…be swept.
Swallowed realizations dawn
This man, revealed, is but a pawn
A fragile lace at virgin’s groin
Torn away….to be purloined,
Acute Embarrassment’s hot blush
Now camouflaged in angers flush.*
M.
Pukehana Paradise
11 July 2016
Jul 9, 2016
Jul 9, 2016 at 12:18 AM UTC