"raincoat" poems
He poured the coffee
Into the cup
He put the milk
Into the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
Into the coffee with milk
With a small spoon
He churned
He drank the coffee
And he put down the cup
Without any word to me
He emptied the coffee with milk
And he put down the cup
Without any word to me
He lighted
One cigarette
He made circles
With the smoke
He shook off the ash
Into the ashtray
Without any word to me
Without any look at me
He got up
He put on
A hat on his head
He put on
A raincoat
Because it was raining
And he left
Into the rain
Without any word to me
Without any look at me
And I buried
My face in my hands
And I cried
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#***It poured a heavenly rain today
The roads washed anew
Little streams danced and slid down the alleys to the music rains play
The Gulmohar petals in orange red hues
Lay strewn on the pavement grey
Perched atop the green leaves
Glorious they looked in the warm sun rays
A walk in the evening mellowed rains
The tiny raindrops fell gently upon my face And raincoat peach
Luminous under the street lamps
Silvery Rain-beams dance***#
Jul 5, 2018
Jul 5, 2018 at 6:10 AM UTC
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!
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'Tryna get to sunny Californy' -
Boom. It's the awful raincoat
making me look like a selfdefeated self-murdering imaginary gangster, an idiot in a rueful coat, how can they understand my damp packs - my mud packs -
„Look John, a hitchhiker'
„He looks like he's got a gun underneath that I. R. A. coat'
'Look Fred, that man by the road' „Some sexfiend got in print in 1938 in *** Magazine' –
„You found his blue corpse in a greenshade edition, with axe blots'
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Another Version
Hartley Forde
You can’t see the wind,
But that old mango tree,
Outside my window,
tell me it’s there..
.
I never travel with a raincoat,
Even though I hate getting wet,
Then here comes the aches and pain
And I started to wonder,
was it because I got a little insane..
I thought that I could
Have run faster than it pours
I haven’t heard of
any aircraft that outrun a jet plane yet,
But, not so anymore,
I never leave my coat and cane,
When I am on a stool,
Oh dear, what has happened to me?
Am I aging? I am not young anymore,
Nor grey, nor old: for age is just a number,
But when the toil of the day
Merges with the aches and pain
With sighing sounds I start to wonder:
I still dance the night away, with my social tunes,
And waltz across the floor to all-time favorite of Strauss
See how I step back in time with the reggae beat,
Lighter than a feather on my feet,
Smiling, with my pearly teeth from ear to ear:
Life just isn’t fear: because age is just a number
That’s when the rubs and oil granny left me:
Come alive again in the neck of time,
to soothe the pain of my aching joints
I smile once again and said
“Oh dear, what do they say again,
Age is just a number and life begins at forty,
Because, I am just starting to be naughty:
Downhill !
written by:
Hartley Forde
Sep 19, 2018
Sep 19, 2018 at 6:48 PM UTC
Droplets tap the dusty windows
Tipping pleasure on the pane
Dribbles every time the wind blows
Prophesize a hurricane
Kisses linger on the backseat
Desperate to delight in more
Suffocated by the heat, but
When it rains, it starts to pour
Panic storm that quickly closes
Smashing waves upon the sand
Tension tearing up the roses
Stuttered poems, shaking hands
Though the pressure keeps you floating
And the ocean licks its shore
There's no way of sugarcoating
Once it rains, it has to pour
Stick a finger in your ceiling
Let the plants hang onto youth
Sunday jazz, petrichor feeling
Hear it tripping on the roof
Smell it shifting all around you
Leaking through your drying veins
Leave your stagnant dragonfly blue
Open up into the rain
When it rains, it pours
I'll blossom being yours
Downpour cleans the ***** traffic
Rippling madly down the drain
Paints the artist something graphic
While he's waiting for the train
Laughter echoes in the morning
Licking soil and clouds to raw
From the vision that's been dawning
Once you rain, it has to pour
Spitting bombshells pelt your raincoat
Tears in quiet pools of green
Holes inside your getaway boat
Water's sweet but can be mean
You've avoided all the warfare
But the stars rampage for more
Douse the thin comfort you still wear
Once it rains, it starts to pour
Stick a finger in your ceiling
Give the plants a thirsty truth
Fairy lights and freedom feeling
Tunes of our torrential youth
Smell it changing all around you
Bursting through the shrivelled veins
Leave your crippled summertime hue
Open up into the rain
When it rains, it pours,
I'll bloom so much being yours
We're a perfect storm, I guess
Fire has been stopped with less
When it rains it has to pour.
Oct 29, 2018
Oct 29, 2018 at 2:46 PM UTC
In bed, I lay
upon my cushioned existence I stay
but outside the world's at play
birds swimming in the sky
and trees that gently sway
dancing the day away
and I continue to lie
the distant sounds
of yawning grounds
two parched lips
as the Earth does rip
let the rain come
so we may take a sip
heavens nectar
falls upon a discarded deckchair
striped like candy cane
blotched with the rain
scattered upon sandy dunes
could this be a monsoon
ironically late
but still worth the wait
paid patience admission at the gate
one ticket to wet wet wet
this is what patience gets
just need a raincoat
so I can appear in the matrix
how can you hate this
a neopolitan sky
dripping with colour
if I were a scholar
I could espouse on its many virtues
instead, I turn up my collar
and tip my hat
a little milk won't hurt you
an umbrella swung round a lamppost
and now I'm Gene Kelly
still wearing a raincoat
but dancing
romancing the moonlight
for night has snuck in the back door
like an absent teenager
but this too shall pass
soon the dunes turn to grass
and I too return to task
a new day
at play.
Oct 7, 2018
Oct 7, 2018 at 2:35 PM UTC
That paper was still me,
Today, I found i m still the same
I still hate rain
I still make paper boats.
Stupid rainfall of march
Stupid me, not carrying raincoat
But that paper was with me
I still love making paper boats
I m still the same, who don’t go restaurant alone
I m still the same, I love standing alone
But that paper was with me
I still love making paper boats
The rain stop! Finally i can go
I still love doing Ha..a: to feel the fogs and act as if i m smoking
I didnt throw the paper boat, i m still carrying it
That paper boat is still with me,
That paper,
That paper(the bill) of a coffee, I had yesterday.
I m still the same.
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 12:28 AM UTC
chocolate fireguard, teapot,
or fender, icecream sofa, dry sea
or wet towel, glass hammer,
waterproof teabag, newspaper
raincoat and umbrella, lead parachute, ashtray on a motorbike,
handbrake on a canoe,
vote in a dictatorship,
loudhailer to a deaf mute,
grief at a wedding,
****** in a monastery.
inflatable dartboard,
spoon in a knife-fight,
screen door on a submarine,
wooden soap, shortbread tires,
knitted light bulb,
bread boat, plasticine wire cutters,
paper hole punch, water hat,
custard floorboards,
ceiling tiles made of gravy,
portrait of a bowl of soup,
a stone cigarette,
syrup knickers, hole in my bucket,
plastic oven, wax truss,
liquorice bridge,
false teeth made of soap,
lemonade roof,
jelly boots,
jam cardigan,
paper bicycle pump,
ice-cream saucepans,
soluble drain pipe,
packet of rubber nails,
see-through mirror,
revolving basement restaurant
roll-on hairspray, rubber pencil,
****** with a hole in it,
limp **** pockets on a lettuce,
**** on a fish, lolly pop van in Hell,
one-legged man in an ****
kicking competition,
meaningless life,
unnecessary death,
forgotten words and deeds,
ignored needs,
this poem.
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 4:11 PM UTC
It is nothing,
a mordant of the soul,
an elixir, a panacea, a placebo
for my lesions, there in the thistle, grows
our drastic garden of red posies and hyacinths,
such little things, on the verge,
lilting as the decorum begins to bobble
and slump sideways, and murmur,
on Mondays I can swallow the octave
of your absence, tendrils and all,
red quince limbs parting from the deluge
and in its wake, the wreckage
of black pumpkins and purple corn, hanging
pendulum at our door,
the Autumn lights summon a lavish song to harvest,
thirty seven colours in the brocade you gift me,
tangled and heavy the years upon my bones
begin to spur and flower
into cunning disruptions,
and stratify upon my body like rinds of ricepaper,
vellum for another wish
in the complacent burial of mango flesh,
listen,
as my song liquefies,
drowns you, inundates
each alveoli, and our love
in the swallowing gush, perched,
begins to shudder,
devoured by its symmetry,
stem cells all akimbo
in the shallow pitch of days
bound in a nostrum of wine and liquorice
it is nothing, really,
a mordant for the soul, a tulle filament
twitching in a raincoat of lightning....
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 4:35 PM UTC
That day i finished
A small piece
For an obscure magazine
I popped it in the box
And such a starry elation
Came over me
That I got whistled at in the street
For the first time in a long time.
I was ***** and roughly dressed
And had circles under my eyes
And far far from flirtation
But so full of completion
Of a deed duly done
An act of consummation
That the freedom and force it engendered
Shone and spun
Out of my old raincoat.
It must have looked like love
Or a fabulous free holiday
To the young men sauntering
Down Berwick Street.
I still think this is most mysterious
For while I was writing it
It was gritty it felt like self-abuse
Constipation, desperately unsocial.
But done done done
Everything in the world
Flowed back
Like a huge bonus.
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The world was never going to end
in fire.
It was never thought to.
Now. Thunder comes on.
The raincoat boleros around the street.
Momentous,
One two slow slow one two. Earth splits
/ an avocado, molten core discarded.
In the southern hemisphere they are waving flags.
Complimentary colors crawl up the sky tiding in.
They are dancing.
Ba-cha
-ta,
Me-ren-gue.
Their hemisphere Charybidises,
trees genuflected.
Quiet. The puddles are sleeping.
In the north. The hemisphere has run aground.
It capsizes. All the bands are going
down playing.
Rain panics off the timpani
prisming.
The brass cherubs in the clouds.
The strings red shift.
At the equator,
an umbrella floats:
1 bird inside it.
She prays in single syllables. Help.
Please.
Quack!
Feb 22, 2011
Feb 22, 2011 at 3:10 PM UTC
I am just your average sinner,
sly glances say, I am second chance, time around .
I spin mediocre wildest-dreams
in rundown hope hotels
I am just a pretty sinner with a
dusty trail of lust
like green pollen in my wake.
A vehicle of possibility
to all the places we can drive our devils,
with cocktails and vague musician
who lean back on wooden chairs, against walls of fading paint.
with tables for sins
to be laid out like Thanksgiving.
My sins are neon signs in yellowed rooms,
My sins are rusted cans kicked in old beach towns.
My sins are hot pavement under cracked rubber tires rumbling above.
My back arched in a prayer to the sky.
The rise of my hipbones like majestic mountains.
My sins leak from my eyes. First one, then another.
Down, Down they fall
I fall to my knees.
They fall and I curse them for leaving me too.
I fall to my knees like the traveler who has journeyed too long,
On my knees and I kiss the dirt of home.
I am humbled and groveling...within my sinning.
And I pray a much louder prayer. I am a much humbler servant, with much to forgive.
I wear my sins like a raincoat to keep me dry from all the
good intention and 'well-deserved!' that might be coming my way.
I twist my sin into a paper flower and wear it in my sinful hair next to my sinful eyes by my sinful mind.
I am just your average sinner
Dreaming of living a better life someday.
Praying to be a better me, someday.
Someday is a funny place to live
With towering hopes
and skyscraping desires scratching at its sterile walls.
No, not for me.
I am just your average sinner...
with extraordinary sins.
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
I have an illustrious dream,
want to be Leonard
Cohen's gypsy wife,
he's kissing my lips on
Boogie Street,
impetuously we dance
to the end of love
'til closing time
midst his secret life,
he serenades me with
I'm your man
when we take Manhattan,
bewildered by his poetic beauty there
waiting for the miracle to happen,
a sip of wine, a cigarette
in love we disappear,
here it is, you got me singing
be that dog in heat,
I'll take this waltz and
another please, cause
everybody knows
I hunger for your touch,
his famous blue raincoat
and the dew on my thigh
goes a thousand kisses deep
in the cave at the tip of the lily
with its very own breath of brandy,
slipping into the masterpiece
where Lenny is eternal
Jul 28, 2015
Jul 28, 2015 at 6:50 PM UTC
The autumn winds ***** her mercilessly,
as idle hands lunge for delicate petticoats.
Their ugly, pockmarked howls pinch her deeply
with each new limb they expose,
until her tears drop like leaves, unheard
and become soiled.
By the winter, she’s left leaning awkwardly
like a slapper against a lamp post.
Her body but scattered, bent baguettes,
freeze-set with the frigid, nightly chills,
which preserve her stark immodesty
and her malign revenge.
Yet spring adorns her with tentative protruding buds,
glazed like freshly shellacked fingernails,
as her body itches with the swellings of youth
and foliage fastens frills around her chest,
summoning the dewy-peach lustre of virginity.
Now she basks in our wanton, forgiving glares.
As the summer teases, she writhes Lolita-like
in a raincoat that clings to her, just so.
Her barely concealed fruits spilling out,
as the sun caresses her skin hotly, until she ****
with that cacophony of lilac bells gawping, grape-like,
ringing out the sweet moans of her petite-mort.
Oct 7, 2020
Oct 7, 2020 at 10:53 AM UTC
You don't have to remind me to listen to three AM school-night words that come out in the soft whispers you've been waiting to share with me in an attempt to shield it from the rest of the world
I'll remember the things you didn't say like engraved textbook lessons
when my skin starts to dampen and stick to my body like a raincoat
my head hits the wood desk so loud everyone stops pretending to pay attention
and i have to write
"he doesn't love me anymore" one hundred times on the chalkboard
and bang the parts of my past i wake up forgetting together
watching the chalk dust from the day my mother told me; they almost lost you fall to the floor
Every negative hallway interaction bubbles over in an abandonment issue chemical reaction
and I had to drop chemistry because I found none of the connections and formulas could fix the imbalance I carry around with me like i shouldn't be failing Psychology 101.
Maybe I'm clueless because I can't tell you why weather changes or square roots of negatives
But I can recite the lisence plate of the car my dad has never visited me in
and my sisters contact information for the 4 minute and 57 second call i can pay $6.43 to make to sit on the floor and learn about juvenile detention while history notes offer me cold faux-sympathy
Maybe I'm clueless because id rather memorize the way your hand moves down my back than the quadratic formula
and give up on poetry mid sentence
and change "moves" to "moved" because it's all in past-tense and the difference between present and present perfect and banging erasers and not sleeping and
forgetting how to function off of autopilot mode
and
there are lessons I will remember that won't come from staring at a projector screen
when to stop talking
how to look like you weren't just sobbing in the bathroom
the unwritten "give a stranger a ****** if they ask" rule
I'll remember every word you tell me like the test is next period and I'll study every syllable and drown in iambic pentameter
and I'll still fail
Nov 23, 2015
Nov 23, 2015 at 3:51 PM UTC
A violent perfume is excreted from a rubber balloon.
The odor lounges, disturbing victims near and far.
Apr 11, 2014
Apr 11, 2014 at 10:17 PM UTC
I think of You and I see the yellow
Of a raincoat, keeping me dry and warm
You’re good at that, wrapping around me tightly
Your arms like the weathered belt
Hands knotted across my stomach
And the rain-soaked hood
Lightly lapping at my cheek
Not unlike your kiss
The drawstrings tumble down
Like Your hair across my chest
But unlike the raincoat
Which will inevitably, ironically
Soak me when I go to take it off
You will always be my shelter
I could never hang You up.
May 10, 2010
May 10, 2010 at 7:36 PM UTC
I was cleaning out the fridge today
And in the back I found this "thing"
It was furry, soft and squishy
From the mind of Stephen King
I didn't want to touch it
It looked like a tangerine
But, from all the fur and oozy stuff
I don't know what it had been
I knew I had to move it
But I wasn't sure quite how
I'd seen things much more appealing
Come from the rear end of a cow
I emptied out the other stuff
I put them in the sink
I was left with this small land mine
That really had a stink
I needed some protection
Before I tried to grab this bomb
so, I closed the door real quiet
And I went to get some on
I put on swimming goggles
To protect my eyes in case
It exploded when I grabbed it
And it jelly-fied my face
I then grabbed my old rain coat
And put it on all front to back
So my front was well protected
In case this thing chose to attack
Hockey gloves to save my hands
Work boots were for my feet
All this to dispose of this
Thing that people eat
I opened up the door again
And as I looked inside
I could swear this thing was throbbing
And it had grown to twice it's size
I slammed the door and grabbed a beer
I had some in the sink
I had to get this thing destroyed
I needed time to think
I called up both my neighbors
I said "Evacuate" the street
I told them I was killing
Some thing that people eat
I couldn't tell them what it was
Because I wasn't sure
I must have bought it months ago
But I didn't know what for
If I knew that this would happen
If the expiration passed
If I knew this when I bought it,
I would have eaten it real fast
I went to get the garbage
I put three new bags inside
I would put the thing inside one
And would then get all three tied
I'd run it to the dump myself
But, I'd have to freeze it first
Because, Imagine what would happen
If the plastic bags had burst
One more thing I had to do
was get some stuff to hide the scent
I thought I'd get some vapo rub
So off to search I went
Now, all prepared and goggled up
in raincoat and in gloves
I was set to grab this thing
For push had come to shove
I opened up the door and there
Where the thing had just now been
Was nothing, not a single thing
Where was my thing of green?
It didn't get out on it's own
And no one would eat it up
The only one who'd like it
Was our garbage eating pup
It was at this point I saw my son
Rolling outside like a log
Playing with our whirling dervish
He had fed it to the dog!!
May 5, 2012
May 5, 2012 at 6:23 PM UTC
My voice echoes with longing
Lost, searching for protection
I wear my raincoat most days
just incase the sky decides to open
and I am left below, out in the rain
searching for shelter in all the
wrong doorways
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 1:00 AM UTC
I expected my first night at a college
to be like in the movies,
and to an extent it was.
Walking down streets on wet asphalt,
halloween night without a raincoat.
Half of my expectations
must have been coated
in a thick fog,
surprising me with consistent images
of you.
We snuck into the bathroom
of an unfamiliar apartment
just to manage one last kiss
before we sobered up.
The costumes would come off
and we would go back to pretending
you were just a friend.
Apr 13, 2015
Apr 13, 2015 at 7:46 PM UTC
I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist's tube to a whispering pinch of salt.
Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just cracked a joke about a new hat he got his wife, when the messenger boy slipped in and asked him to sign. He gave the boy a nickel, tore the envelope and read.
Then he yelled "Good God," jumped for his hat and raincoat, ran for the elevator and took a taxi to a railroad depot.
As I say, it was like a set of crystals in a chemist's tube and a whispering pinch of salt.
I wonder what Diogenes who lived in a tub in the sun would have commented on the affair.
I know a shoemaker who works in a cellar slamming half-soles onto shoes, and when I told him, he said: "I pay my bills, I love my wife, and I am not afraid of anybody."
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