"purloining" poems
as if pulling (on the tab)
prevents the continued closure
of the lunch box
oxen milling brunch
as it unfolds sinewed pasture
green purloining sunlight
oxen munching salami on Thursday morning
mourning the luncheon of Sunday
black black blackberries lugubrious
lubricate brioche freshness
pile of white pile of brown pile of pylons
pile (on the tab)
shots are on me
shots fired no casualties
oxen bagged lunches aren't as fun as pulling punches
Mar 20, 2014
Mar 20, 2014 at 5:06 PM UTC
fifty trillion of them,
give or take an exponential few,
programmed to replicate, then die, ad infinitum
spawning perfect copies to ensure
molecular harmony
their perfection could not keep
their host from huffing on tar sticks,
gobbling bacon by the kilo, or worshiping the sun's crisping rays
until one of their eternal days, a perverse mutation occurred
one at first, then two, then four, then more
forgetting that all were once destined to die,
in a crimson clockwork fashion
apoptosis
the new invader would hear nothing
of this strange word, for it was the emperor of maladies,
its geometric procession a spinning spectacle to behold,
purloining space from the mortality hobbled trillions
evicted by cancer's kangaroo court
it will have its reign,
this galloping ghost maker, until
the host gives up the fight, and
that which fed its gluttony
will starve it as blithely
as the body gave it
******* birth
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 11:19 AM UTC
I could
apologize for writing all
these words, ones that I seem
to have picked from piles of trash,
heaps I found while walking this flat earth
giant stale stacks of others’ discarded stories,
beer bottles, cell phones, and smashed
light bulbs
I could
apologize for boring you
for being a purloining recycler,
of all those fetid finds, of all those relics
though I am certain I didn’t know what
my larcenies and other crimes were,
until after I committed them
I could
apologize for ALL my sins,
and beg for absolution, say I am simply sorry
for being born, for breathing and producing
carbon dioxide, though plants
have never complained
Dec 20, 2014
Dec 20, 2014 at 4:10 PM UTC
the management
at Hello Poetry
need to be mindful
of grand larceny
those who involve themselves
with this impropriety
would be scooted off
other writing sites
very promptly
theft is theft
and stealing
is a federal crime
they the perpetrators
bear a shingle
of low down slime
taking other's
copyrighted pieces
always their appalling
paradigm
yet these persons
aren't bought to book
they have a free rein
in employing the purloining hook
plagiarists so bereft
of a writing capacity
nicking your works and mine
with reprehensible audacity
Jun 26, 2017
Jun 26, 2017 at 9:05 PM UTC
Like God amassing gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh,
vain potentates, possessed by pride that riches will confer,
depleted pillaged villages in pagan days of old…
With *********** privileges, their fortunes were foretold.
In feudal times, chaste clerics, cloaked, wrapped rings around the mind
with hymns of magic, mystic myths and figurines enshrined,
while blessing bayonet-like blades that mutilate and maim…
With *********** privileges, believers bore no blame.
In search of caramel colonies, some sailors set their sails
to conquer puppet provinces, for sovereignty prevails,
purloining wicked treasure troves which others claimed their own…
With *********** privileges, such sins sustained the throne.
Well, nowadays the quest proceeds, this time for ebon oil,
so peoples once again are caught within the serpent’s coil
and, pierced by fangs of greed and lust, death yields benign escape…
With *********** privileges, you’re free to rip and ****
We wave the flags and beat the drums and often kneel to pray
to glorify our victories, bold, that happen far away;
but none salute the severed souls impaled upon a pike…
With *********** privileges, the riffraff look alike.
One day the moguls won’t agree on how to slice the pie;
they’ll spit and spat and, tit-for-tat, atomic barbs will fly -
but when the button’s finally pressed, they too will grace the heap…
With *********** privileges, the hole that’s hewn is deep.
Apr 20, 2021
Apr 20, 2021 at 5:13 PM UTC
We follow the bridleway that dissects the growing field of wheat, now dark green and vigorous after it's Spring dose of nitrogen. Pass the smouldering ruin of a bonfire which has been awaiting the torch for weeks. Charred black are two big sections of oak trunk which I considered purloining every time I passed, but decided they looked too heavy to move.
Reach the road, rein in the dog's lead, turn right. The thatch I renewed a few years back is definitely not looking new any more. Past the houses, past the one where the whistler lives. All the way across the wide East Anglian field I often hear him trilling, when we are both pottering in our gardens. He has a brick outhouse, probably a former loo or wash house. A thrush is sitting on top of the chimney and a blackbird on the weather vane, they look about four feet apart. I pick up a lager can, crush it and slip it in my back pocket. A pigeon climbs, claps its wings and glides back down. Jogger's footsteps catch up from behind. It's the chap who owns a Harley Davidson.
I turn back into our lane, a skylark is singing loud and clear above us to the left. A rabbit dashes across the lane a few yards ahead, disappears. The dog's ears go straight up and he eagerly sniffs its trail. Back home.
May 20, 2016
May 20, 2016 at 4:58 PM UTC
if I manage to step barefoot
in a large enough pile of dog dung,
I might be able to find a metaphor, either in the tracks
I left or in the cracks between my toes
if I sniff with enough finesse,
a simile may sift its way upward
from the ambitious heap, like grandiose molecules
ascending to heaven,
or at least to my nose
if my ears are keenly tuned,
the squishing sound may be sibilantly sublime,
or be alive with rhyme, or paint pious pictures
if synesthesia suddenly ensues
what was the question again?
creativity? I yet need a different pile of dung,
from perhaps another beast, for the canine
is likely tired of my verbose purloining
from the gift he left eagerly
on the greedy ground
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 5:06 PM UTC
My memory fails me not
It was no hallucination, and nostalgia indeed is a filthy liar which paints pictures prettier than their reality—but I remember this just as clearly as it occurred:
On a warm Autumn night, I laid beside the moon
He rested the back of his head on my stomach and I ran my fingers through his hair, nothing but the sound of a soft melody and the waves of the sea gently caressing the sand beneath us humming through the air
I had traveled a distance to see you, to feel you, to touch you—and my Lord, was I taken aback by the beauty you radiated at hand
On a warm Autumn night, the moon and I laid atop one another and stared at the darkness of the sky
The only light that surrounded us that night, my love, was emitted by you. But you were too mesmerised by a fallen star—or in our case, two—to notice how mesmerised I had been by you
The earth, the sand, and the wind hugged us, but I swear we were no longer a part of this world
In an enclosed, far-off dimension, I got to touch the moon
I was hugged, kissed and loved by the moon, and no human will have ever known how beautiful you truly are the way I now do
On a warm Autumn night, your lips brushed against mine, and I felt my heart sink to the pit of my stomach
I felt my skin grow warmer, I felt my soul entwine with yours
Oh how they’d envy these lips of mine, if only they knew
How can I verbalise the insanity of being held by you?
The morality—or lack, thereof—of purloining you?
Not mine to take but I shan’t withhold this passion surging through me—through us—through our tangled bodies, and oh Lord I had begun falling...
On a warm Autumn night, the universe froze for a mere second, and stars fell for a couple seconds longer
A spliff hung between your parted lips and the tide spoke to me in a hushed whisper
And I looked into your soul through those bewitching eyes of yours, and nobody else existed
And on that autumn night, in those seconds, like the season: I began to fall.
Oct 20, 2019
Oct 20, 2019 at 6:13 AM UTC
it was with greater risk that I knew
that when I let you in,
your metaphysics, my being would acquaint
itself to such metanoia:
that there was such an air in your voice
that would sway me a forest and give me
a necklace of sunlight. like a well-oiled machine
I let your gruel work its way like a beast
claiming the calm, like the youth purloining the silence,
like the death making most frugal the earth and its troves.
little night, black bird of my heart: when you
take your flight in me, solder me up
there, vertiginously above the floor:
all those of much the land that coats
our feet’s trembling aches,
all that still laughs
without what joy shapes with its motherly hands
where you assume the stillness as something
the shadow languages and transfixes
in all of the days
lays captured, a darkness too
halved, voyaging without eyes, in every direction
eclipsing with the sound of incontrovertible music,
echoing, rippling in me with
alterations.
Jan 11, 2016
Jan 11, 2016 at 3:24 AM UTC
I feed from the thoughts
that others have got
I steal, and I make, my own way
purloining the gist, adding a twist
still theft, so what, can I say?
It drives to the heart
she's beautiful, smart
and her words flow well, from her pen
feeling to spare, she loves, and she cares
no matter of how, where, or when
He pours from his soul
emotions, burning like coal
as I break and take away, parts
homage I pay, in my only, best way
reassembling to fit, in my cart
The art not my own
no crown and no throne
I merely **** out, the blood
giving me life, passion, and strife
like my heart, on the edge
of a knife
May 28, 2024
May 28, 2024 at 1:29 PM UTC