"recriminations" poems
Disentangling abstractedy,
A bee returning crazily along the path of least resistance
Flying home.
Through the orchids, flax and irises
Lilacs dripping promises,
Mist-laced and mapped with honesty
He goes home.
Morning recriminations
Bitter sprinkles in the milk,
Stood there; his mind is wandering to apricots and silk
Desire twisted hungrily,
A door slammed......
home overthrown by silence.
Storm clouds horizon kissing
Dark thoughts of something missing,
........then nothing more.
Feb 9, 2013
Feb 9, 2013 at 5:06 PM UTC
How is the ex treating you?
Somedays it's a bit like a zoo,
Recriminations and regrets,
People you'd rather forget,
Amicable divorce not self-evident,
Happy-ever-after so not manifest,
Added to your survivor baggage,
All part of your mental luggage!
Somedays, it is a bit like a zoo,
How is the ex treating you?
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 7:59 PM UTC
and punch the wall.
I cry out her name sobbing...
she's gone
slamming the door.
she storms out
my face stings
SLAP.
Hurt expression...rage
recriminations
wounded hearts.
Angry words, petty jealousies
my insecurities her indignation...
Confrontation, accusation.
Where have you been?
She comes home.
Sep 18, 2011
Sep 18, 2011 at 1:16 PM UTC
Your contours that mark the sand
Depresses the earth into an outline
You are traces of a man
Hollowed out by the horror of your pain
Oh! Son of man, where is ye shame?
You are bound like an ox to a chain
Your body sways like a pendulum
As you lower and harvest their grain
Chains bind you to your fellow men
So that feet that once ran move now in defeat
They motion as a reminder of your labours
And the bond you have with your captors
Liberty, justice and all that was good
You were made to abandon for a morsel of food
"Yes Master, no Master, three bags full Master"
Baa the woolly sheep bleated in surrender.
Why let the dust of your labours
That fill the air with its derision
Settle willingly on your once dark skin
Mixing your blackness into a confusion
Black is the colour of your conscience
Black was the colour of your rituals
Black feet ran and black hands played
Black babies were the dawn of a new age
You let that slip through your fears
Your memory blurred by ashes
Your brain that incinerated your courage
Condemned you to the life of a savage
Rise up, son of man who fears freedom
Your traces will have no roots
An outline of your existence
Is a hollow grave without its occupant
Don't preach the Bible as your saviour
Unless you have more to offer
Don't mark your history by enslavement
And the heritage you were made to abandon
That chain that links your past
To a future that is bleak
Is a God of eternal bonds
Secured by your hidden Masters
Your children dance in the shadows of your enslavement
Morphing your chains into a cross
A freedom founded on great men and courage
Is short-lived by bitter recriminations
The ghettos, the drugs, the guns and deaths
The rap that is the anthem of your anger
Makes a chain between right hand and left
As your youth disappears forever
Aug 24, 2014
Aug 24, 2014 at 12:56 PM UTC
The bottle and old thoughts haunt me all the same
In whispers of what was and should never be did we lose our way
or just vanish as quickly as the night before the day?
So many times I thought of lines
now simply I cast shadows where the blank spaces do reside.
Tomorrow cannot promise so why should I?
Let the words hold there own where I never could .
We all have a cross to bear and me?
I prefer to simply drive in the stake
But make no mistake,
what's nailed upon
an empty cross
is full of regret and loss
and underneath a barren plain
is buried pleasure and sadistic pain
self recriminations and needless blame,
but all the same
we build empires of shame
to live inside as truly insane
we drink from memories
that stoke a flame
to burn eternally, assuring fame
and comfort in a well of regret
we drink to forget, tomorrow
was just a promise made to us
by those that sit at our feet
when they crawl upon our laps
we are beat, we are trampled beneath
our own demise, we hid beneath
our own disguise
and we expired, when we desired
surcease from our wickedness
As I walk a red card in my jacket and miles of empty thoughts long cast aside
No words find solace were the demons cling to their vices.
All things decay as if to remind the living of the walk we all must bear
I find no guilt in my pleasures just more scars to bare in happiness to none.
Whispers of once was lay in empty thoughts.
I speak with a mouth full of razors all to eager to cut down the meek .
No words hold me in chains I simply but as I will nothing speaks clearly as a pause of silence.
And the old thoughts that linger to grow into rumors
Now they are all that is left of me .
Rumors of old bones that litter
the path to ruin are spoken by
those that whisper to dead ghosts
and kiss bloodless lips
inside crumbling passages
of age old keeps, on windswept
moors where bleeding eyes leak
tears weeping for something more
Down the streets cobbled with fear
slicked with garbage and the stench
of ever rotting verbiage,
Speak no more in silence, cry no more in penance of an oft abused
life that only walks alone under an
ever present thunderstorm of
howling winds and lightening strikes
and icy rivulets that trickle upon skin
This walk of sin is where it begins .
Oct 18, 2015
Oct 18, 2015 at 5:01 PM UTC
There are times in my life
When all I want to do
Is to disappear
No plans
No questions
And no recriminations
Just disappearance
To nowhere
By Phil Roberts
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 5:59 PM UTC
There’s a place up the avenue
Where lovers come to fail
Look at each other with dispute
And hate is all they feel.
When they check in they always say
“I tried so hard, where do I sign my name.”
They always complain about the investment they have made
Does the room, have a place to change?
The credit card’s declined
The Hotel never seems to mind
The key is in the shape of a broken arrow
right to the heart.
The desk clerk smirks
Gets your name exactly right,
Even though you’ve never met
until this night.
The concierge will give you directions to the local graveyards
The bell hop only dances and never says a word
When you give him a tip, he’ll only throw out your words
The elevator only goes down
The only music heard is the sound
Of a solitary heart beating in rhyme
Singing the song
“You will never be mine”.
The hall way corridor goes on forever backwards in time
The lonesome sounds of whales singing
Echoes through the halls, coming through the walls
And from beneath every door.
The rooms offer amenities
The devil dancing in the pain
On the head of a pin
The walls have one function
That’s to close on in.
The ribbon of blood
That seeps through the mirror
Dances in inkblots all the way
To the sink
Which drips tears of
Frustration
Resignation
Isolation
Recriminations.
The bathtub waters
Only run too hot
or
Too cold.
There is a bed of nails
Inviting ruminations
The images of her with him
Him with her
Strobes on the ceiling in endless loops
Of anguish’s fatal tunes.
Room service offers a variety of suicide utensils
The mini-bar contains a row of empty bottles
and a syringe without a needle.
The garbage men are always out side
Garbage cans crashing through the endless night sky
The windows open to brick walls
While couples in bliss dance cheek to cheek
In the bar across the street
Sometimes they look up at you and smile
That smile.
This nightly room has become a weekly
The weekly a monthly
And if you are not careful
Stay too long
Once you check in
The check out will always be closed
At the Hotel Heartbreak
Just down the road.
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 1:22 PM UTC
By: Cedric McClester
Yesterday, today
And tomorrow
Through finger pointing
Recriminations and sorrow
There’s little else
On which to borrow
Other than pretending
At trying to be thorough
Just who do they
Think they fool
By invoking
Congressional rule
Using oversight
As a weapon or tool
While grandstanding
And being cruel
After eleven hours
Of having been grilled
Their objectives
Still haven’t been filled
No blood on the floor
Has been spilled
‘Cos the witness
Just answered and chilled
Clearly she’s much wiser
And older
She brushed their accusations
Right off of her shoulder
As their questions
Got hotter not colder
She dug her heels in
Like a soldier
Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 8:21 AM UTC
There are times in my life
When all I want to do
Is to disappear
No plans
No questions
And no recriminations
Just disappearance
To nowhere
By Phil Roberts
May 4, 2016
May 4, 2016 at 1:49 PM UTC
Once I held the paw of a dog
and gave it something to look at as it died.
Betrayal; he looked to me and I
held
him
down.
The drugs that crept through narrowing veins
sharpened their knives inside his skin;
he shuddered. Odd, apparently they are not supposed
to fight this forgiveness, this blessing cyanide disguise.
His eyes never left mine,
though the light lingering flickered
and my hand on his faltered
that instant we were infinity itself
suspended, his tremors humming through my hand
but then I encounter the imminence of
reality, when I saw that he could reach it no longer.
Now I hold still his recriminations on my face
with hands that fall slack, and he waits
at the edges of moments of weakness.
my loyal companion, mans best friend,
such misfortune I was not born a man.
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 8:36 AM UTC
The bottle and old thoughts haunt me all the same
In whispers of what was and should never be did we lose our way
or just vanish as quickly as the night before the day?
So many times I thought of lines
now simply I cast shadows where the blank spaces do reside.
Tomorrow cannot promise so why should I?
Let the words hold there own where I never could .
We all have a cross to bear and me?
I prefer to simply drive in the stake
But make no mistake,
what's nailed upon
an empty cross
is full of regret and loss
and underneath a barren plain
is buried pleasure and sadistic pain
self recriminations and needless blame,
but all the same
we build empires of shame
to live inside as truly insane
we drink from memories
that stoke a flame
to burn eternally, assuring fame
and comfort in a well of regret
we drink to forget, tomorrow
was just a promise made to us
by those that sit at our feet
when they crawl upon our laps
we are beat, we are trampled beneath
our own demise, we hid beneath
our own disguise
and we expired, when we desired
surcease from our wickedness
As I walk a red card in my jacket and miles of empty thoughts long cast aside
No words find solace were the demons cling to their vices.
All things decay as if to remind the living of the walk we all must bear
I find no guilt in my pleasures just more scars to bare in happiness to none.
Whispers of once was lay in empty thoughts.
I speak with a mouth full of razors all to eager to cut down the meek .
No words hold me in chains I simply but as I will nothing speaks clearly as a pause of silence.
And the old thoughts that linger to grow into rumours
Now they are all that is left of me .
Rumours of old bones that litter
the path to ruin are spoken by
those that whisper to dead ghosts
and kiss bloodless lips
inside crumbling passages
of age old keeps, on windswept
moors where bleeding eyes leak
tears weeping for something more
Down the streets cobbled with fear
slicked with garbage and the stench
of ever rotting verbiage,
Speak no more in silence, cry no more in penance of an oft abused
life that only walks alone under an
ever present thunderstorm of
howling winds and lightening strikes
and icy rivulets that trickle upon skin
This walk of sin is where it begins
Oct 18, 2015
Oct 18, 2015 at 4:33 AM UTC
I am floundering
in a sea of doubts;
in a mire
of recriminations
and guilt -
for having crossed
the border
into the unchartered
waters of individuality.
Suddenly
an Ave Maria
haunting
my room
in the isolated
depths of the night
prevents
my scream from developing
and startling the entire village.
Jul 5, 2010
Jul 5, 2010 at 7:03 AM UTC
The Captains and the Kings depart
Conflict’s flag descends the mast,
Skirmishes of battle stilled
Recriminations put to past.
A pageantry is in the air
Banners snap to stiff sea breeze,
White dust stirs as multitudes
Retreat in legions to the seas.
War retreats to motes of peace
Lost and honoured are deceased,
Weary troops are homeward bound
With mortal sins repealed by priest.
A stillness on the fields of mud
Skyward points artillery’s snout,
Cordite’s stink conceals the blood
Of legends made in battle’s route.
A stillness in the ringing ears
As corporals wend their weary way
To embarkation’s khaki fleet
Which wallows short in ocean sway.
A weariness of bone and limb
Bloodshot eyes glaze over now
Trudging to Creation’s Hymn
Juxtaposed by war... somehow?
Whitecaps on the ocean spray
The Captains and the Kings depart,
Repatriation’s cloak descends
To wrap war’s futile, cold, black heart.
Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
9 September 2011
Sep 8, 2011
Sep 8, 2011 at 11:20 PM UTC
Recriminations of a flawed existence
Blind stupidity and stubborn persistence
Thoughts of what might have been
Reminiscing on times long gone
Distant memories……
Ghosts that hang about my neck
Heavy chains like so much unwanted bling.
In my domain I am the king
The lone wolf now treads lightly
In my wake I left apocalyptic wastelands
Remnants of holocausts played out in the mind
Napoleonic wars of the soul
Hollow victories that widen the hole
residing in the ozone of my heart.
Longing for my Waterloo
Not knowing what to do
Or how to ease my pain
So much time spent in the rain
Need to find some balm
Something to restore the calm
So I write
I write…..to ease my mind.
Sep 4, 2009
Sep 4, 2009 at 10:22 PM UTC
Don't worry about what your aunts say
Or your uncles
I will protect you from the brunt of
Their recriminations and disappointments
Who asked them, anyway!
They don't know how you feel exposed
And naked when they heap lectures on you
They don't know what you went through
With your latest loves and failures
They do not know how I will fight for you
When push comes to shove and I grow claws
Friends? The very best, the best I've ever known
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 3:35 AM UTC
Crimes and recriminations, swear oath to the Constitution, so help me God, Charlottesville, good men on both sides, a merry-go-round of sychophants and con-men, love letters to dictators, not up, not in, partying with Epstein, ******* prostitutes and playgirls, Maga rallies and riots. turning Oval Office into black box, pulling kids, even babies, from mothers's arms, a wall too far, no bridges, can't read or write English, pandemic a "Democrat hoax," Mar-a-lago back swing, under the bus, orange skin and orange hair, no empathy, blaming others, one impeachment after another, take 'em to court 50-60 times, racists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, KKK, won by a landside, storm the Capitol, hang Pence, **** Pelosi, another day in democracy, Air Force One, America last.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Jan 29, 2021
Jan 29, 2021 at 6:45 AM UTC
Within the long Selah,
deep in the chasm of the pause,
His words sink,
seep,
down into the cracks,
into the gaps
and salves where bitter words
were once rooted
and grew to sprout a harvest
of self recriminations
to the third and fourth generation.
Within the long Selah,
in that cleft
his seed begins
a fresh sowing
and leaves new promise
of a fresh crop
of sweeter fruit.
Feb 13, 2021
Feb 13, 2021 at 5:41 PM UTC
You can feel it,
In the voices of men on
phones in bars
Spitting apologies turned
recriminations.
You can feel it,
In the scratching of strings
on the guitar
of an inmate and the eyes that
stare in the face of disinheritance.
You can feel it,
In the clasp of the couple
at the beginning or the end
In bed in the dark
in a fleshy shell.
You can feel it,
In the ink on a page
scribbled in rage
that goes nowhere
but leaves you different.
You can feel it,
In screams of a soldier
turned human through pain
calling 'mum!' or 'god!'
dying abandoned .
You can feel it,
In the cries of a child
who's met unfairness
and not learned to swallow the blades
so throws them out in tears.
You can feel it,
In goodbyes that are
lost for words
but language cannot express.
You can feel it,
In the the stretched out fingers
of those trying to reach
a hand or hate or love or life.
You can feel it,
In watching another slip
and slide away
and flail their useless limbs.
You can feel it,
As the morning rain
hits your hand
and cleanses the skin on your knuckle.
You can feel it sting
You can feel it sting
Let it sink in
and feel it.
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 4:21 PM UTC
He slipped into her life like angels sighing.
She crashed into his life like shrapnel flying.
He always knew their worlds were just too far apart,
But she was heaven in his heart.
She was so lonely.
Everything he tried to say seemed wrong.
His one and only
Love,
when love should not have come along.
His distant kindnesses seemed much like lying
She did her best but she was sick of trying.
She knew they couldn’t be together from the start.
But he was heaven in her heart.
He was perfection.
Everything she wanted him to be.
Without exception.
But he wasn’t there
when she was free.
And so they parted at long distance.
Crying.
The accusations and recriminations flying.
They knew they wouldn’t be together
From the start.
Though they’d been Heaven in the heart.
Apr 25, 2010
Apr 25, 2010 at 11:07 AM UTC
my tongue in my cheek…
I despise the word relationship, singular and plural,
as it inevitably applies to swooning couples.
I’m old enough to remember the time
before Woody Allen made it a permanent part
of everybody’s everyday lingua franca.
That was his truly heinous crime.
Finally, I have banished them from my life.
I can leave dishes unwashed for weeks,
sleep on the whole bed with all the covers,
allow the trash to grow into mounds,
and, best of all, never have to shave again.
I like not having to read anyone’s mind,
satisfy anyone’s endless, mysterious needs,
or do things I really do not want to do.
Selfish of me, surely, but such sweet relief.
Relationships mostly lead to too many
conversations, usurpations, explanations,
denunciations, recriminations, vivisections,
and, finally, to rancorous separations.
They are necessary for the romantic young
and for propagating the species, but
I am old and well past propagating.
I keep them lodged firmly in my past where
I can remember the best and forget the rest.
I prefer my cat, my books, solitude, silence,
microwave tacos, and peace of mind.
Hey, I’m not kidding about this!
And yet, there is the loneliness factor…
So I might welcome a companion who
was not desperately “seeking a relationship.”
But that is no woman I have ever met
and, I fear, no woman I ever will.
Jan 25, 2017
Jan 25, 2017 at 12:00 PM UTC
there would be no sleep
this night
wracked with reckoning
futile cup of decaf cooling
minutes become
memories murmuring
recriminations reverberate
bowed head nodding
over quiescent keyboard
as vivid visions vanish
one
into
another
hesitant hours hovering
errors echoing
in void of forgiveness
aching agony of awareness
becomes brutal
he receives respite
as night became day
he understood what truth
could be known
he has only himself
and the day before him
and so he lay down
and so his eyes close
in the light of morning
Feb 6, 2021
Feb 6, 2021 at 12:15 PM UTC
*Farewell Life, Farewell
What recriminations while I LOVED
That I smiled even in pain
That I served even in suffering
But now, with death impending
You, my beloved has forgotten me
In which case
My life - An ewer unfilled
My LOVE - A completion of death!*
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 2:05 AM UTC
1. Head buzzing with recriminations, I’m lost.
2. Tired of abandonments, I left early.
3. A fork: the answer or unknown?
4. Stinging hornet knives slash ocean sharp.
5. **** you. Now ******** silence deafens.
Dec 5, 2020
Dec 5, 2020 at 1:16 PM UTC
I come back and see I have facebook friends I don't even know
and now they're loaded in my phone
and there's way too much information at my fingertips
and I may slip up and find something I don't want know
and what were my dreams trying to warm me about
and how can I find peace between my ears?
i didn't have a good childhood so now I imagine one
back in my home town with the parent I never had and
feeling loved and warm throughout the day, and not
looking out the window and wondering what I did wrong to cause my mother
to leave and realizing, knowing now after 500 years of therapy that it was about
her and not me, and my boss is not my mother and after 500 years of therapy
you'd think I'd know that but it's hard sometimes...
what we have to do is come back to what we know to be true
past all the chatter and shoulds and inner cruelties
you may have to obey someone but you don't have to respect him
inside although you play act at meetings and all
A lot of staying sane seems to be, knowing what you know
when you are really in your true self and being able to hang on
to that, you know, that is hard but not as hard
as all the chatter and self recriminations
so it is worth it, my friend, it is very worth it.
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 9:01 PM UTC
She brushed her veil aside and tilted her head upward,
Not seeking comfort or benediction,
Only to confirm what she **** well knew was happening,
That the skies, full of gray and grim portent if not outright malice,
Had picked this very time to begin steadily dripping,
Signaling what was sure to be a sodden downpour
(The weekend already chock-a-block with disasters:
The chocolate fountain a testament to dysfunction,
The rehearsal dinner poached salmon overdone and dry
The limousine company downsizing them at the last minute,
Having realized their top-line models
Could never handle the grade or narrow figure-eight drive
Up to the mansion’s precarious hilltop locale.)
The photographer, who’d lived around here all his days
And had developed a sixth sense
Concerning the vagaries of the weather
As well as those of combustible brides,
Had done his best to border-collie the proceedings along,
But as the droplets increased in size and intensity
Recriminations were hurled and doors slammed
As the bridal party sulked off
Toward what promised to be a most interesting reception.
We’d witnessed the goings on,
(Bride fulminating, groom supplicating
The location for the pictures apparently his idea,
Thus proving there are places
Where angels and husbands should fear to tread)
From a safe distance, under the overhang of the great porch
Overlooking the broad, ostensibly placid Hudson below,
Having come here in spite of the clouds,
As the odd rumble of thunder,
And occasional spate of rain being part and parcel of things,
As we’d mucked through these parts long enough to know
That they were fleeting,
And not without compensations of their own
If one was of a mind to seek them out
(We knew full well of the bewitchment
Of seeing the clouds descend slowly,
Covering the sleeping silhouette of old Rip Van Winkle
Slumbering in the knobby Catskill foothills just to the southeast)
And no more than fifteen minutes
After the newly minted man and wife left,
The sun broke through, glorious and unfiltered,
And we ducked into the great room of the house,
Reveling in the magic of unaugmented light.
Aug 14, 2017
Aug 14, 2017 at 1:17 PM UTC