"rafter" poems
Sometimes I wake up to
spatial tension
and awkward sting,
where there are fractions of
unwanted proteins and
dripping enzymes.
Sometimes I wake up to
obsidian corpuscles
of unknown origin
and encounters with
sentiment-shakers,
dream-eaters,
and rafter-rattlers.
Sometimes it is as simple as
dripping beige,
intangible amber,
and cold, cold, blue.
Sometimes I wake up
to nothing, too.
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 10:46 PM UTC
1481
The way Hope builds his House
It is not with a sill—
Nor Rafter—has that Edifice
But only Pinnacle—
Abode in as supreme
This superficies
As if it were of Ledges smit
Or mortised with the Laws—
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I’ll split the hairs, I’ll split an atom
And never leave the bedroom.
I most identify with December,
Not because of the crushing temperature
But the lack of cosmic dawdling
Is no more mesmerizing than a frozen phoenix.
And as she arrives by train from Phoenix,
I study who she appears to be, the atoms
Composing her auburn hair with dawdling
Authenticity shout “Take me to the bedroom!”
While the wedge of geese in this temperature
Head to the Southern Hemisphere’s December.
The common chill of this morning in December
Prevents us from rising from out the covers like a phoenix,
And our blankets like ash defend us from the temperature
That stills the vibrations of the atmosphere’s atoms.
I curse the insulated walls of the bedroom,
Trapping in heat and discouraging our dawdling.
A rafter of turkeys outside my window are dawdling,
Printing their runes on the documents of December
Between the thickets surrounding the bedroom
While the sun, golden like the plumage of a phoenix,
Awakens in my bones every dormant atom,
Instilling in me courage to brave the temperature.
I follow her, dressed, from the bedroom
And her footsteps serve to punctuate the temperature
Like the smoldering beak of a phoenix
Too busy being risen for dawdling.
She leaves, by train through the chill of December,
Me daydreaming of fission. The splitting of an atom.
I’ll split an atom daily, safely within the bedroom
And sleep through December’s pitiless, hollow temperature,
Waking only for dawdling until Spring is a phoenix.
Mar 24, 2010
Mar 24, 2010 at 10:16 PM UTC
I'm telling lies to terrorize tame territory,
and so they'll strip me down, string me up, and bleed me dry of glory.
Mourning from the morning after, hanging from a ceiling rafter.
Two rows of platinum canines, call me a gangsta-veloci-rapper.
Truly emancipated, drinking whiskey from Lincoln's skull.
Proclamation of my bank roll grants more ***** than animal control.
Flicking cigarettes at MC's who think they're superior,
into their passenger window to burn holes in their interior.
I run all night, jiggle my handle after flushing.
All the plump gals seem to love me, I've got their cellulite a'blushing.
I don't like ***** but I'll sip on something Russian,
if you ship her in the mail first class from your Middle-Euro cousin.
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 2:24 PM UTC
(Warning this poem contains visual content
which may be considered too morbid or shocking
for those of refined and gentle tastes.)
Rock a-bye-bye, Bethy,
from the wood-beam rafter stock,
when the neck-noose tightens,
Bethy's body will twitch, sway and will rock,
the chair she kicked out shall tumble and fall,
and rock a-bye-bye Bethy, will be dead and that's all.
_________________
Disturbing photographic image:
http://beautyineverything.com/2375915615
Oct 5, 2010
Oct 5, 2010 at 6:01 PM UTC
I killed myself today.
It was too much.
The debt,
The expectations,
The hippies,
The stonefaced
Unsympathetic Vietnam vets asking me if I was a *****
To tell you the truth, Gus,
You've got to be pretty **** ******** to slit that throat,
To pull that trigger,
To hang that corpse from a rafter high.
But I did it classy.
Yeah.
I died like a Roman who had plotted against great Caesar.
I went home,
Slipped into the tub wearing a suit I pieced together from Uptown Thrift.
As the scorching water flowed,
I sipped wine and read the bible.
King James Version only, mind you.
As the water approached my neck I shut it off.
I laughed at the hypocrisy:
A suicide scene with a bible strewn about.
I muttered,
Then took the knife and opened up my veins.
I bled out.
My thoughts drifted to depressing things:
My 2 year old brother working a night shift at Walmart holding back his tears while being yelled at by a balding middle aged man who never did anything with his life,
A dog corpse ***** and mutilated by some *******
A banker smoking a cigarette and laughing in an infant's face,
And the world turning on.
As it always does.
As it always will.
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 6:11 PM UTC
The rabbit haunts from a distance, patrolling fields for one to bear witness.
Gracefully the tenderfoot stalks, keeping a watchful eye out for Mr.Fox.
The creature walks with a slight limp, other animals often call him a gimp.
This way, that way, it all seems wrong, keeping time with a lost robin's song.
His home constructed as a single story wonder, located within a large tree laying asunder.
Family life wasn't right, as fleeting an image as a wayward kite.
A field mouse, left without spouse,
Stumbled upon the home in a tree, accompanied by a group of songbirds filled with glee.
The field mouse was asked to go, the creature in response, simply said no.
A man stumbled up, as mad as a hatter, his portly girth made it hard to imagine being any fatter.
He spoke of intrinsic right, boundless visions beyond sight.
Told the rabbit he had a duty to the mouse, saying it immoral to deprive him of a house.
The rabbit, reluctant to accept , found out from the man of the true evils in neglect.
He was told that he didn't own the home, it had simply been gifted as a goodwill loan.
That meant it was as his as much as the rabbits, regardless of any perspective habits.
With that the moused moved in, and brought with him his prized snakeskin.
Over a meal the mouse spoke of danger, coming in the form of a wandering stranger.
He told the rabbit, this creature travelled light, but usually shrouded in the cover of night.
Said the creature was not large in size, though his methods of thievery seemed quite wise.
The rabbit recoiled in his chair, as the field mouse offered up a demonic glare.
The field mouse grinned from ear to ear, sensing this rabbit's new grasp on fear.
Pulling the snakeskin from his sack, the dried shell was quick to crack.
The mouse spoke of a brave duel, between him and this monster, which had downed a mule.
He used every ounce of his cunning, and sent the legless beat running.
It wasn't good enough for the mouse, who was certainly no louse.
He tracked the snake for six long hours, through a field of partially bloomed flowers.
In the end he killed the snake, then took its skin so listeners knew the tale wasn't fake.
He held the skin, I mean the mouse, and said he'd hang the shell within the house.
Mr. Rabbit was found dead two days after, his body lay desecrated next to the snakes, hanging from a rafter.
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 1:02 PM UTC
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead—
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow’s glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart’s echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute—
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman’s knell.
When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?
Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
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SELECTED FROM THE IRISH NOVELISTS
THERE was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.
It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man: gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.
Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.
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216
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—
Untouched my Morning
And untouched by Noon—
Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection—
Rafter of satin,
And Roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze
In her Castle above them—
Babbles the Bee in a stolid Ear,
Pipe the Sweet Birds in ignorant cadence—
Ah, what sagacity perished here!
version of 1859
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—
Untouched by Morning—
And untouched by Noon—
Lie the meek members of the Resurrection—
Rafter of Satin—and Roof of Stone!
Grand go the Years—in the Crescent—above them—
Worlds scoop their Arcs—
And Firmaments—row—
Diadems—drop—and Doges—surrender—
Soundless as dots—on a Disc of Snow—
version of 1861
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Coiled beneath a sleepers rafter,
atoning for the numbness
chosen, not felt.
I burn with a dark desire
to achieve an infinite satisfaction,
paraphrasing every minuscule sin
not fortified,
every schema variegated.
Nov 11, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 at 6:08 PM UTC
Find me atop a stool
tap dancing by myself
with my best friends
the rafter
and
the belt
Sep 7, 2012
Sep 7, 2012 at 4:15 PM UTC
hang the clean laundry
on the rafter
above my head
tired hands
wring out drenched
sweaters
clothing above me dripping,
the drops fall on me
like rain
Mar 13, 2017
Mar 13, 2017 at 9:47 PM UTC
I hear it
half in the bag of blankets
with an empty glass of wine
dumped
Between--
the furnace rumbling on
and the cat purring on my lap
"What the hell!"
That foreign sound!--
...of water in the winter
Far too cold for rain
more like a forest stream's refrain
I start to think of birds-- Then it occurs
I have a problem in the basement
Wading into the waters of Lake Laundry
Glancing warily for those snakes of wires
suspended from their rafter's limbs
about to spit and snag me
with their lightning strike
Slamming that ****
to make it go--
away--
Defeat
dripping off
jeans and unders
A clothes line pinned
with curses
Ah yes.
The smell of the Tide ...
going out
on another day
Mar 14, 2018
Mar 14, 2018 at 12:47 PM UTC
There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.
It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man: gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.
Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.
2.2k
There was a snail (named Dale)
with a very long tail
who ventured off into the world.
He said to himself
(Dale the snail)
I'd love to meet a bootiful goil.
So in a flash from space,
with mucus running down her face,
came an alien creature called Joan,
She saw a silver line
(it was a snail trail)
and followed it to see where it goes.
And far in ...the distance
she saw in an instance
at the end of the snail trail sparkling in the sun-
A slimy and sweet
creature she'd love to meet
with a shell on his back for a home.
She said:"I do declare,
you look dashing and fair"
as bubbles oozed from her eyes.
Dale just blushed,
as his face lit up,
and said: "aw you're just saying that you sassy young blob of an alien gawjus sweet thing with no hair :)"
She looked at this tiny dream of a slobber,
he was in awe at her globber.
But their hearts sank at their difference in size.
She was glandular large
like a bright yellow barge
and he was as small as a splarge.
A stick insect saw -
the tragedy of it all
and came up with a very cunning plan.
He knew a wizard once
who ate snails for lunch,
they could trick him to changing her small...
As he told them the tale,
their faces went pale
but their love was too strong for the fear.
So they slithered and shlozzered
to Joan's flying saucer
to find the castle of Wizzy the ****
The wizard was waiting
with his eyes full of hating
and a knife and a fork in each hand.
There was garlic and salt
that he took from his vault
and he drooled on his beard as he sang:
"Alien Shpeegle
with shnails in shmeegle,
a delightful shurprishe for a man!
Groggy my groach
with shome shlime on my toasht"
and he pranced and danced with his band.
The spacecraft landed,
unexpectant of ambush,
the couple wanderd on in.
Wizzy swung from a rafter
and trapped Dale in a corner,
and said: "My you'll go well with my Shtew!"
Joan got mad
and rolled on to her lad
and ****** the wizard into her goo.
She suddenly felt all tingly
as she turned into a twinky,
there was nothing more she could do.
The Wizard escaped
and poor Dale met his fate,
and was smeared on the twinky sliced in two.
Wizzy gobbled them up
with some glee in his cup,
and then succumbed to food poisoning goo.
So it seemed that it ended
on that dark cold September,
for the lovers who's loving was doomed...
But on a planet far away
at the early break of day
two souls bubbled in primordial stew.
An amoeba named Dale
and an amoeba named Joan
were floating in bubbles of gas,
So deep the attraction
-the magnetized action,
they could now be together at last.
Dec 11, 2010
Dec 11, 2010 at 1:38 AM UTC
There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.
It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man: gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.
Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.
1.9k
My thoughts bear me back
I can hear self speak
To mediocrity n’ tack;
Horror, how my words leak!
Hear me dish out
What I was handed
My worst - Infernal spout -
The vermin banded.
If I do live in me mind
What Paradise I expect to find?
Despite the daughter, my sole joy, laughter
What! Must my body travail
From rafter to rafter?
Then again, vermin mill round
I tap away, coroner profound
Aug 21, 2015
Aug 21, 2015 at 2:42 PM UTC
I saw a girl in a wheelchair on her porch
and wasps were swarming in the cornice
She had just washed her hair
taken it down and combed it
She could see
just like me
That one star under the rafter
shining like a knife in the creek
She was thin as the hereafter
and made me think
Of music singing to itself
like someone putting a violin in a case
And walking off with a stranger
to lie down and drink in the dark by the lake.
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 9:10 PM UTC
you're so gorgeous
in the morning
the sun can't even
stay away,
spreading itself evenly
across your sleepy skin
in a way i can't even
get peanut butter to...
& i let the sun have you
every morning
& i watch you,
like a pervert wearing sunglasses,
as it kisses
every
inch
of
you.
i mean i knew you were into older men
but Jesus...
he's more aged & damaged
than the planet that we're dancing on,
or drowning on,
& i'm jealous of his yellow fingers
lighting up the white
hairs on your belly
like his mourning dew defeats the dandelions,
but when i scramble
for your eyes' yolks,
you're already gone!
panic-
i'm--rapidly--
building--scaffolding--past--
the--rafter--beams--
IN--HOPES--
that--i--can--catch--the--theif---- --- -- -
but he sets ablaze my plastic wings
& i come crashing
to
cat
as
trophy cases that i place you in
because i'm so afraid to touch you
in those moments
you're awake,
so i just whisper
in your ear
when your eyes are put away...
Jun 5, 2011
Jun 5, 2011 at 6:28 PM UTC
Hello suicide!
Its been awhile
Remember me?
Yer ol' buddy Kyle?
I need your assistance
To escape from this trial
Forgive me friend
If I'm unable to smile
Ah, yes! Kyle, of course!
Forgive me bud
If my voice does sound hoarse
I've been hanging around
Don't you see?
I'm glad you've swung by
To console in me
For my first recommendation
Is hanging
Yes, in fact
This is my plea
Might I suggest a rafter
Or perhaps a nice tree?
This ones on the house
Yeah, this one is free
Ah, yes! A hanging
Indeed!
But if I were to do that
A rope I would need
Not only that
But I could be rescued
And freed
Do you have another?
Please forgive me suicide
Forgive me for my greed
What else can I do?
Please consider my plead!
Ah, yes! I can do one more
But I'm growing tired and weak
And my neck is still sore
Take a handful of pills
And overdose
This I know you've tried
And you came really close
But you can't be easily rescued
And you don't need a rope
Do it! Destroy your dreams!
And trample your hopes!
Excellent! This one sounds great
For sure!
I do have a decease
And pills might be the cure
But what if I live
What if my body endures?
But this option has potential
And it has great allure
I'll consider this option
To you, I ensure
Well, well, well!
Look what we have here!
Looks like I'm successful
As if a death is near
Theree no need to panic
Theres no need to fear
However, I do need payment
So start paying in tears!
Now RIP my good friend
Its been fun mate, cheers!
Nov 6, 2020
Nov 6, 2020 at 2:18 PM UTC
He is said to have been the last Red man
In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed—
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher’s license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
“Whose business,—if I take it on myself,
Whose business—but why talk round the barn?—
When it’s just that I hold with getting a thing done with.”
You can’t get back and see it as he saw it.
It’s too long a story to go into now.
You’d have to have been there and lived it.
They you wouldn’t have looked on it as just a matter
Of who began it between the two races.
Some guttural exclamation of surprise
The Red man gave in poking about the mill
Over the great big thumping shuffling millstone
Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
From one who had no right to be heard from.
“Come, John,” he said, “you want to see the wheel-pint?”
He took him down below a cramping rafter,
And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,
The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,
Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.
The he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise,
And came upstairs alone—and gave that laugh,
And said something to a man with a meal-sack
That the man with the meal-sack didn’t catch—then.
Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel-pit all right.
1.5k
Exuberant ecstatic rapture
Sardonic denigrating quip
Joisting up an oaken rafter
The cabin of a sailing ship
Lucid eloquent recumbence
Surreal retrospective grace
Endless ocean’s myriad turbulence
Infinity would set it’s pace
Imbue spontaneous induction
Exude efficient transience
Exhort the mystic symbiotic construction
For the course of our intransigence
Litigant ludicrous licentiousness
Coquettish audacious impunity
Lecherous libidos atrocious impertinence
Would pound id’s shore horrendously
Derisive subjugated nuance
Extol intrinsic unity
Nebulous wisps of shaded quiescence
With breeze and sky make harmony
Predilect effluent effusion
Tenacious taubla tapestry
Alleviate the torrential confusion
Acquire efficience for flights symmetry
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 12:39 PM UTC
The Street Cleaner
He is not a lucky man, but he is happy but one day he won on a lottery ticket,
not a not a big sum of money but enough to by wheelbarrow got permission
from the local council to keep the town's streets clean. Happy, telling himself
he was self- employed and could sleep till nine in the morn if he wanted to.
A busy bee a busy bee he was till he collided with Mercedes was taken to court
and his wheelbarrow was confiscated to pay for the damage. He had a bike and
got a local garage to put a two- wheel contraption to fasten to his bike, the town
got rid of its trash again until an officious policeman asked him if he had a licence
for this he didn't and it was confiscated. Now he had a jute sack slung on his proud
shoulders and a walking stick with a nail attached, a weapon a police officer said
he was carrying a weapon in public and he was prosecuted. He didn't show up
to the hearing and when the law came around, he hung from a rafter sometimes
even serious optimists give up and with no cleaner the town sank into misery,
plagued by vermin the population fled, a town given into paper napkins pizza boxes
and burger wrappers and the poor who had nowhere to go. And if this reflects
the life of a typical inner city of our English speaking world it is purely incidental.
Aug 14, 2015
Aug 14, 2015 at 3:42 AM UTC
Ach, a delicah constitution, have I
me auld bones are getting wearier
if somebody sneezes I have a cowld
its getting worser the more I get older
I can’t get a dacent man
but I’m looking as hard as I can
I’ve got a little piece of land
so for a dowry he’d be grand
See, since I buried my first two
it’s not easy to get a beau
and these day’s I’m not such a pretty view
I can be a bit contrary
and my moods oft vary
but unlike my sister Mary
I haven’t got a tash long and hairy
I don’t need any of that *** stuff
I can tell ya that for nuttin
Its help around the farm I’m huntin
I can make a dacent cup-o-tay
and I’m handy at baling the hay
so if your up for a bit of honest toil
and your humour don’t make me blood boil
Come marry Teresa Rafter
when I’m gone you’ll live happily ever after
Apr 23, 2013
Apr 23, 2013 at 6:44 AM UTC