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Sylvia Plath
The Bee Meeting
Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers----
The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.
In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,
And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?
They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.

I am **** as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?
Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my knees.
Now I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.
They will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.

Which is the rector now, is it that man in black?
Which is the midwife, is that her blue coat?
Everybody is nodding a square black head, they are knights in visors,
Breastplates of cheesecloth knotted under the armpits.
Their smiles and their voces are changing. I am led through a beanfield.

Strips of tinfoil winking like people,
Feather dusters fanning their hands in a sea of bean flowers,
Creamy bean flowers with black eyes and leaves like bored hearts.
Is it blood clots the tendrils are dragging up that string?
No, no, it is scarlet flowers that will one day be edible.

Now they are giving me a fashionable white straw Italian hat
And a black veil that molds to my face, they are making me one of them.
They are leading me to the shorn grove, the circle of hives.
Is it the hawthorn that smells so sick?
The barren body of hawthon, etherizing its children.

Is it some operation that is taking place?
It is the surgeon my neighbors are waiting for,
This apparition in a green helmet,
Shining gloves and white suit.
Is it the butcher, the grocer, the postman, someone I know?

I cannot run, I am rooted, and the gorse hurts me
With its yellow purses, its spiky armory.
I could not run without having to run forever.
The white hive is snug as a ******,
Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly humming.

Smoke rolls and scarves in the grove.
The mind of the hive thinks this is the end of everything.
Here they come, the outriders, on their hysterical elastics.
If I stand very still, they will think I am cow-parsley,
A gullible head untouched by their animosity,

Not even nodding, a personage in a hedgerow.
The villagers open the chambers, they are hunting the queen.
Is she hiding, is she eating honey? She is very clever.
She is old, old, old, she must live another year, and she knows it.
While in their fingerjoint cells the new virgins

Dream of a duel they will win inevitably,
A curtain of wax dividing them from the bride flight,
The upflight of the murderess into a heaven that loves her.
The villagers are moving the virgins, there will be no killing.
The old queen does not show herself, is she so ungrateful?

I am exhausted, I am exhausted ----
Pillar of white in a blackout of knives.
I am the magician's girl who does not flinch.
The villagers are untying their disguises, they are shaking hands.
Whose is that long white box in the grove, what have they accomplished, why am I cold.
Continue reading...
baygls 4 lyfe Sep 2014
5 reasons to reform welfare
Like the bike you bought after saving lawn-mowing money for a year, welfare reform was the prized trophy of the conservative governing philosophy. We believed that we'd found the vehicle of social mobility for poor Americans, once and for all. No one should live on taxpayer money without doing some work on their own, right? Everyone agrees, right?

Wrong. President Obama ran over our bicycle, issuing illegal waivers to welfare's work requirements and taking the wheels off the program. The fact is, we never won the welfare battle after all. Out of the 80 different federal welfare programs, the '96 welfare reform really only fixed one. A third of the U.S. population received benefits from one or more of these 80 programs in 2011. According to the Department of Agriculture, one program alone – food stamps – gave benefits to a record-breaking 47.7 million in the last month of 2012, benefits those millions didn't have to work to receive.

Rep. Paul Ryan recently said it's time to use the 1996 reform as a model to fix the rest of welfare. He's right, for at least five compelling reasons.

1. America's welfare programs are redundant and inefficient. As The Heritage Foundation's welfare expert Rachel Sheffield noted, there are at least 12 separate programs providing food aid, 12 funding social services, and 12 assisting education. Average benefits from all welfare programs are about $9,000 per recipient. If you converted those programs to cash, it would be more than five times the amount needed to raise every household above the poverty line. We should streamline redundant programs to save money while getting the same or better value.

2. Means-tested welfare programs are fiscally unsustainable. These cost nearly $1 trillion annually. By the end of the decade, welfare spending will rise from five percent to six percent of GDP. This means every taxpaying family would have to make, and then give up, over $100,000 in the next ten years – just to cover the cost of welfare spending.

Imagine this: If government spending were a pie, welfare would be a bigger slice than defense, education, or even social security. This isn't apple pie a la mode. It's poison-the-economy pie with a side of swamp-our-children-in-debt ice cream.

3. The welfare state encourages dependence instead of lifting people out of poverty. Poverty has actually increased with federal spending on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, we've spent nearly $20 trillion total on “the war on poverty.” That's more than the combined price tag of all America's wars. Ever. From the American Revolution through Afghanistan, we've spent less than $7 trillion. These days, we spend 13 times what we spent on welfare in the 1960s. Guess what? In 1966, the share of the population living below the poverty threshold was 14.7%; by 2011, that share rose to 15.0%.

This spending gives people significant incentives to stay on welfare. According to the Senate Budget Committee, if you break down welfare spending per household in poverty, recipients are making $30/hour. That's higher than the $25/hour median income – certainly more than what I make per hour.

4. Welfare dependence creates behavioral poverty. Perhaps President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best: “Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” To become comfortable relying on the work of others instead of your own work will change your character, and the character of the nation. Americans want to give everyone a helping hand, but hand-holding year after year, generation after generation, patronizes, corrodes, entraps. In the words of welfare policy experts Robert Rector and Jennifer Marshall writing in National Affairs:

Material poverty has been replaced by a far deeper “behavioral poverty” — a vicious cycle of ***** childbearing, social dysfunction, and welfare dependency in poor communities. Even as the welfare state has improved the material comfort of low-income Americans by transferring enormous financial resources to them, it has exacerbated these behavioral problems. The result has been the disintegration of the work ethic, family structure, and social fabric of large segments of the American population, which has in turn created a new dependency class.

Is this the America we want? It is not compassionate to leave a whole class of people in perpetual dependence. Behavioral poverty cuts off millions of citizens from a chance at American opportunity, destroying the virtues necessary to sustain oneself. My generation has seen the effects of behavioral poverty – in D.C., Detroit, or my hometown, Cleveland. Whole neighborhoods rot. To many, this cycle of dependence indicts the principles of American society as inherently unfair.

5. Work requirements promote individual responsibility and reduce poverty. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) work requirements slashed welfare caseloads by nearly 60 percent. Poverty among all single mothers fell 30 percent. About 3 million fewer children lived in poverty in 2003 than in 1995.
Because I am not a lying sack of ****, I got my info from spectator.org
Continue reading...
MacKenzie Turner Dec 2011
The Rector Counts Lost Gulls
Who fell asleep in
her headphones plugged into
Abalone shells
a repeating sequence of ocean swells
on this frequency, smoke signals--
Don't touch that dial
While the land-locked
pulpit-boy's preaching denial;
Push up that skirt,
fashioned out of swans' feathers scattered
over the parson's house
It's hallowed ground you're jumbled upon
bleeding out oceans on the parish lawn.
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Lawrence Hall Aug 2018
An Open Letter to Really Important People / The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement
An Open Letter to Really Important People
                     The Old Dime Box, Texas Statement
           A Manifesto Made Manifest in Manifesting Manifestingness

We post this serious looking document
Bloated with long vocabulary words
Sodden with weak dependent clauses
Marshaled in numbered ranks, down, down they go

To the GossipNet all serious like
And everyone has to pay attention to us
Because it’s AN OPEN LETTER, y’know -
You may sign it if you’ve got letters behind your name

Signatories:

Apostle-Disciple Magic Dawn, DD., Non-Binary, Author of Green Polar Bears I Am, Co-Equal-Director of the Anti-Oppressionist Theatre Against the Occupation, Agent of the Revolution, Auteur, Guest on The Wheel of Fortune and Parent of Two AMAZING children of indeterminate Gender with Their AWESOME and AMAZING Life-Partner Sven-Marie.

Massive Ferguson, M.Ed., Poet, Rector of Admissions, The University of Where the Old Circuit City Use to Be

Poncy Tworbst, M.A., PUBLISHED Author, Seeker, Inspirational Singer-Songwriter, PUBLISHED

Heather-Mistee La’ Thwitte-Tworbst, Ph.D., Director of Library Resources at Saint Margaret ****** Homeschool Resource Authority Collective, Inc., Certified Ordained Consecrated Priest in The Worldwide Church of Me-ness and Pastor of the World-Famous Weddings ‘R’ Us Chapel of Rainbow Dreams in Magdalena, New Mexico

Lawrence Hall, HSG, Thinker of Thinky-Ness and, Like, Stuff, Endowed Chair he found at Goodwill, His Mark: X

(Sean Ian Johann Johnson, MBA, J.D., Chief Photocopier Operator at Donald Trump University and Fashion Editor at Gun, God, and Guts Magazine, was not able to sign today; he is sharing a cell with other White House staff and patiently awaiting The Day of Greatness.)
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.
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William Butler Yeats
Are You Content?
I CALL on those that call me son,
Grandson, or great-grandson,
On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts,
To judge what I have done.
Have I, that put it into words,
Spoilt what old ***** have sent?
Eyes spiritualised by death can judge,
I cannot, but I am not content.
He that in Sligo at Drumcliff
Set up the old stone Cross,
That red-headed rector in County Down,
A good man on a horse,
Sandymount Corbets, that notable man
Old William pollexfen,
The smuggler Middleton, Butlers far back,
Half legendary men.
Infirm and aged I might stay
In some good company,
I who have always hated work,
Smiling at the sea,
Or demonstrate in my own life
What Robert Browning meant
By an old hunter talking with Gods;
But I am not content.
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Carl Sandburg
Boy and Father
THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.
The leather law books of Alexander's father fill a room like hay in a barn.
Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.
  
  The rain beats on the windows
  And the raindrops run down the window glass
  And the raindrops slide off the green blinds down the siding.
The boy Alexander dreams of Napoleon in John C. Abbott's history, Napoleon the grand and lonely man wronged, Napoleon in his life wronged and in his memory wronged.
The boy Alexander dreams of the cat Alice saw, the cat fading off into the dark and leaving the teeth of its Cheshire smile lighting the gloom.
  
Buffaloes, blizzards, way down in Texas, in the panhandle of Texas snuggling close to New Mexico,
These creep into Alexander's dreaming by the window when his father talks with strange men about land down in Deaf Smith County.
Alexander's father tells the strange men: Five years ago we ran a Ford out on the prairie and chased antelopes.
  
Only once or twice in a long while has Alexander heard his father say "my first wife" so-and-so and such-and-such.
A few times softly the father has told Alexander, "Your mother ... was a beautiful woman ... but we won't talk about her."
Always Alexander listens with a keen listen when he hears his father mention "my first wife" or "Alexander's mother."
  
Alexander's father smokes a cigar and the Episcopal rector smokes a cigar and the words come often: mystery of life, mystery of life.
These two come into Alexander's head blurry and gray while the rain beats on the windows and the raindrops run down the window glass and the raindrops slide off the green blinds and down the siding.
These and: There is a God, there must be a God, how can there be rain or sun unless there is a God?
  
So from the wrongs of Napoleon and the Cheshire cat smile on to the buffaloes and blizzards of Texas and on to his mother and to God, so the blurry gray rain dreams of Alexander have gone on five minutes, maybe ten, keeping slow easy time to the raindrops on the window glass and the raindrops sliding off the green blinds and down the siding.
Continue reading...
Christina Rossetti
Under The Rose
"The iniquity of the fathers upon the children."


O the rose of keenest thorn!
One hidden summer morn
Under the rose I was born.

I do not guess his name
Who wrought my Mother's shame,
And gave me life forlorn,
But my Mother, Mother, Mother,
I know her from all other.
My Mother pale and mild,
Fair as ever was seen,
She was but scarce sixteen,
Little more than a child,
When I was born
To work her scorn.
With secret bitter throes,
In a passion of secret woes,
She bore me under the rose.

One who my Mother nursed
Took me from the first:--
"O nurse, let me look upon
This babe that cost so dear;
To-morrow she will be gone:
Other mothers may keep
Their babes awake and asleep,
But I must not keep her here."--
Whether I know or guess,
I know this not the less.

So I was sent away
That none might spy the truth:
And my childhood waxed to youth
And I left off childish play.
I never cared to play
With the village boys and girls;
And I think they thought me proud,
I found so little to say
And kept so from the crowd:
But I had the longest curls,
And I had the largest eyes,
And my teeth were small like pearls;
The girls might flout and scout me,
But the boys would hang about me
In sheepish mooning wise.

Our one-street village stood
A long mile from the town,
A mile of windy down
And bleak one-sided wood,
With not a single house.
Our town itself was small,
With just the common shops,
And throve in its small way.
Our neighboring gentry reared
The good old-fashioned crops,
And made old-fashioned boasts
Of what John Bull would do
If Frenchman Frog appeared,
And drank old-fashioned toasts,
And made old-fashioned bows
To my Lady at the Hall.

My Lady at the Hall
Is grander than they all:
Hers is the oldest name
In all the neighborhood;
But the race must die with her
Though she's a lofty dame,
For she's unmarried still.
Poor people say she's good
And has an open hand
As any in the land,
And she's the comforter
Of many sick and sad;
My nurse once said to me
That everything she had
Came of my Lady's bounty:
"Though she's greatest in the county
She's humble to the poor,
No beggar seeks her door
But finds help presently.
I pray both night and day
For her, and you must pray:
But she'll never feel distress
If needy folk can bless."
I was a little maid
When here we came to live
From somewhere by the sea.
Men spoke a foreign tongue
There where we used to be
When I was merry and young,
Too young to feel afraid;
The fisher-folk would give
A kind strange word to me,
There by the foreign sea:
I don't know where it was,
But I remember still
Our cottage on a hill,
And fields of flowering grass
On that fair foreign shore.

I liked my old home best,
But this was pleasant too:
So here we made our nest
And here I grew.
And now and then my Lady
In riding past our door
Would nod to nurse and speak,
Or stoop and pat my cheek;
And I was always ready
To hold the field-gate wide
For my Lady to go through;
My Lady in her veil
So seldom put aside,
My Lady grave and pale.

I often sat to wonder
Who might my parents be,
For I knew of something under
My simple-seeming state.
Nurse never talked to me
Of mother or of father,
But watched me early and late
With kind suspicious cares:
Or not suspicious, rather
Anxious, as if she knew
Some secret I might gather
And smart for unawares.
Thus I grew.

But Nurse waxed old and gray,
Bent and weak with years.
There came a certain day
That she lay upon her bed
Shaking her palsied head,
With words she gasped to say
Which had to stay unsaid.
Then with a jerking hand
Held out so piteously
She gave a ring to me
Of gold wrought curiously,
A ring which she had worn
Since the day that I was born,
She once had said to me:
I slipped it on my finger;
Her eyes were keen to linger
On my hand that slipped it on;
Then she sighed one rattling sigh
And stared on with sightless eye:--
The one who loved me was gone.

How long I stayed alone
With the corpse I never knew,
For I fainted dead as stone:
When I came to life once more
I was down upon the floor,
With neighbors making ado
To bring me back to life.
I heard the sexton's wife
Say: "Up, my lad, and run
To tell it at the Hall;
She was my Lady's nurse,
And done can't be undone.
I'll watch by this poor lamb.
I guess my Lady's purse
Is always open to such:
I'd run up on my crutch
A ******* as I am,"
(For cramps had vexed her much,)
"Rather than this dear heart
Lack one to take her part."

For days, day after day,
On my weary bed I lay,
Wishing the time would pass;
O, so wishing that I was
Likely to pass away:
For the one friend whom I knew
Was dead, I knew no other,
Neither father nor mother;
And I, what should I do?

One day the sexton's wife
Said: "Rouse yourself, my dear:
My Lady has driven down
From the Hall into the town,
And we think she's coming here.
Cheer up, for life is life."

But I would not look or speak,
Would not cheer up at all.
My tears were like to fall,
So I turned round to the wall
And hid my hollow cheek,
Making as if I slept,
As silent as a stone,
And no one knew I wept.
What was my Lady to me,
The grand lady from the Hall?
She might come, or stay away,
I was sick at heart that day:
The whole world seemed to be
Nothing, just nothing to me,
For aught that I could see.

Yet I listened where I lay:
A bustle came below,
A clear voice said: "I know;
I will see her first alone,
It may be less of a shock
If she's so weak to-day":--
A light hand turned the lock,
A light step crossed the floor,
One sat beside my bed:
But never a word she said.

For me, my shyness grew
Each moment more and more:
So I said never a word
And neither looked nor stirred;
I think she must have heard
My heart go pit-a-pat:
Thus I lay, my Lady sat,
More than a mortal hour
(I counted one and two
By the house-clock while I lay):
I seemed to have no power
To think of a thing to say,
Or do what I ought to do,
Or rouse myself to a choice.

At last she said: "Margaret,
Won't you even look at me?"
A something in her voice
Forced my tears to fall at last,
Forced sobs from me thick and fast;
Something not of the past,
Yet stirring memory;
A something new, and yet
Not new, too sweet to last,
Which I never can forget.

I turned and stared at her:
Her cheek showed hollow-pale;
Her hair like mine was fair,
A wonderful fall of hair
That screened her like a veil;
But her height was statelier,
Her eyes had depth more deep:
I think they must have had
Always a something sad,
Unless they were asleep.

While I stared, my Lady took
My hand in her spare hand,
Jewelled and soft and grand,
And looked with a long long look
Of hunger in my face;
As if she tried to trace
Features she ought to know,
And half hoped, half feared, to find.
Whatever was in her mind
She heaved a sigh at last,
And began to talk to me.
"Your nurse was my dear nurse,
And her nursling's dear," said she:
"No one told me a word
Of her getting worse and worse,
Till her poor life was past"
(Here my Lady's tears dropped fast):
"I might have been with her,
I might have promised and heard,
But she had no comforter.
She might have told me much
Which now I shall never know,
Never, never shall know."
She sat by me sobbing so,
And seemed so woe-begone,
That I laid one hand upon
Hers with a timid touch,
Scarce thinking what I did,
Not knowing what to say:
That moment her face was hid
In the pillow close by mine,
Her arm was flung over me,
She hugged me, sobbing so
As if her heart would break,
And kissed me where I lay.

After this she often came
To bring me fruit or wine,
Or sometimes hothouse flowers.
And at nights I lay awake
Often and often thinking
What to do for her sake.
Wet or dry it was the same:
She would come in at all hours,
Set me eating and drinking,
And say I must grow strong;
At last the day seemed long
And home seemed scarcely home
If she did not come.

Well, I grew strong again:
In time of primroses
I went to pluck them in the lane;
In time of nestling birds
I heard them chirping round the house;
And all the herds
Were out at grass when I grew strong,
And days were waxen long,
And there was work for bees
Among the May-bush boughs,
And I had shot up tall,
And life felt after all
Pleasant, and not so long
When I grew strong.

I was going to the Hall
To be my Lady's maid:
"Her little friend," she said to me,
"Almost her child,"
She said and smiled,
Sighing painfully;
Blushing, with a second flush,
As if she blushed to blush.

Friend, servant, child: just this
My standing at the Hall;
The other servants call me "Miss,"
My Lady calls me "Margaret,"
With her clear voice musical.
She never chides when I forget
This or that; she never chides.
Except when people come to stay
(And that's not often) at the Hall,
I sit with her all day
And ride out when she rides.
She sings to me and makes me sing;
Sometimes I read to her,
Sometimes we merely sit and talk.
She noticed once my ring
And made me tell its history:
That evening in our garden walk
She said she should infer
The ring had been my father's first,
Then my mother's, given for me
To the nurse who nursed
My mother in her misery,
That so quite certainly
Some one might know me, who--
Then she was silent, and I too.

I hate when people come:
The women speak and stare
And mean to be so civil.
This one will stroke my hair,
That one will pat my cheek
And praise my Lady's kindness,
Expecting me to speak;
I like the proud ones best
Who sit as struck with blindness,
As if I wasn't there.
But if any gentleman
Is staying at the Hall
(Though few come prying here),
My Lady seems to fear
Some downright dreadful evil,
And makes me keep my room
As closely as she can:
So I hate when people come,
It is so troublesome.
In spite of all her care,
Sometimes to keep alive
I sometimes do contrive
To get out in the grounds
For a whiff of wholesome air,
Under the rose you know:
It's charming to break bounds,
Stolen waters are sweet,
And what's the good of feet
If for days they mustn't go?
Give me a longer tether,
Or I may break from it.

Now I have eyes and ears
And just some little wit:
"Almost my lady's child";
I recollect she smiled,
Sighed and blushed together;
Then her story of the ring
Sounds not improbable,
She told it me so well
It seemed the actual thing:--
O keep your counsel close,
But I guess under the rose,
In long past summer weather
When the world was blossoming,
And the rose upon its thorn:
I guess not who he was
Flawed honor like a glass
And made my life forlorn;
But my Mother, Mother, Mother,
O, I know her from all other.

My Lady, you might trust
Your daughter with your fame.
Trust me, I would not shame
Our honorable name,
For I have noble blood
Though I was bred in dust
And brought up in the mud.
I will not press my claim,
Just leave me where you will:
But you might trust your daughter,
For blood is thicker than water
And you're my mother still.

So my Lady holds her own
With condescending grace,
And fills her lofty place
With an untroubled face
As a queen may fill a throne.
While I could hint a tale
(But then I am her child)
Would make her quail;
Would set her in the dust,
Lorn with no comforter,
Her glorious hair defiled
And ashes on her cheek:
The decent world would ******
Its finger out at her,
Not much displeased I think
To make a nine days' stir;
The decent world would sink
Its voice to speak of her.

Now this is what I mean
To do, no more, no less:
Never to speak, or show
Bare sign of what I know.
Let the blot pass unseen;
Yea, let her never guess
I hold the tangled clew
She huddles out of view.
Friend, servant, almost child,
So be it and nothing more
On this side of the grave.
Mother, in Paradise,
You'll see with clearer eyes;
Perhaps in this world even
When you are like to die
And face to face with Heaven
You'll drop for once the lie:
But you must drop the mask, not I.

My Lady promises
Two hundred pounds with me
Whenever I may wed
A man she can approve:
And since besides her bounty
I'm fairest in the county
(For so I've heard it said,
Though I don't vouch for this),
Her promised pounds may move
Some honest man to see
My virtues and my beauties;
Perhaps the rising grazier,
Or temperance publican,
May claim my wifely duties.
Meanwhile I wait their leisure
And grace-bestowing pleasure,
I wait the happy man;
But if I hold my head
And pitch my expectations
Just higher than their level,
They must fall back on patience:
I may not mean to wed,
Yet I'll be civil.

Now sometimes in a dream
My heart goes out of me
To build and scheme,
Till I sob after things that seem
So pleasant in a dream:
A home such as I see
My blessed neighbors live in
With father and with mother,
All proud of one another,
Named by one common name,
From baby in the bud
To full-blown workman father;
It's little short of Heaven.
I'd give my gentle blood
To wash my special shame
And drown my private grudge;
I'd toil and moil much rather
The dingiest cottage drudge
Whose mother need not blush,
Than live here like a lady
And see my Mother flush
And hear her voice unsteady
Sometimes, yet never dare
Ask to share her care.

Of course the servants sneer
Behind my back at me;
Of course the village girls,
Who envy me my curls
And gowns and idleness,
Take comfort in a jeer;
Of course the ladies guess
Just so much of my history
As points the emphatic stress
With which they laud my Lady;
The gentlemen who catch
A casual glimpse of me
And turn again to see,
Their valets on the watch
To speak a word with me,
All know and sting me wild;
Till I am almost ready
To wish that I were dead,
No faces more to see,
No more words to be said,
My Mother safe at last
Disburdened of her child,
And the past past.

"All equal before God,"--
Our Rector has it so,
And sundry sleepers nod:
It may be so; I know
All are not equal here,
And when the sleepers wake
They make a difference.
"All equal in the grave,"--
That shows an obvious sense:
Yet something which I crave
Not death itself brings near;
How should death half atone
For all my past; or make
The name I bear my own?

I love my dear old Nurse
Who loved me without gains;
I love my mistress even,
Friend, Mother, what you will:
But I could almost curse
My Father for his pains;
And sometimes at my prayer,
Kneeling in sight of Heaven,
I almost curse him still:
Why did he set his snare
To catch at unaware
My Mother's foolish youth;
Load me with shame that's hers,
And her with something worse,
A lifelong lie for truth?

I think my mind is fixed
On one point and made up:
To accept my lot unmixed;
Never to drug the cup
But drink it by myself.
I'll not be wooed for pelf;
I'll not blot out my shame
With any man's good name;
But nameless as I stand,
My hand is my own hand,
And nameless as I came
I go to the dark land.

"All equal in the grave,"--
I bide my time till then:
"All equal before God,"--
To-day I feel His rod,
To-morrow He may save:
            Amen.
Continue reading...
César Vallejo
El libro de la naturaleza
Profesor de sollozo -he dicho a un árbol-
palo de azogue, tilo
rumoreante, a la orilla del Mame, un buen alumno
leyendo va en tu naipe, en tu hojarasca,
entre el agua evidente y el sol falso,
su tres de copas, su caballo de oros.

Rector de los capítulos del cielo,
de la mosca ardiente, de la calma manual que hay en los asnos;
rector de honda ignorancia, un mal alumno
leyendo va en tu naipe, en tu hojarasca,
el hambre de razón que le enloquece
y la sed de demencia que le aloca.

Técnico en gritos, árbol consciente, fuerte,
fluvial, doble, solar, doble, fanático,
conocedor de rosas cardinales, totalmente
metido, hasta hacer sangre, en aguijones, un alumno
leyendo va en tu naipe, en tu hojarasca,
su rey precoz, telúrico, volcánico, de espadas.

¡Oh profesor, de haber tánto ignorado!
¡oh rector, de temblar tánto en el aire!
¡oh técnico, de tánto que te inclinas!
¡Oh tilo! ¡oh palo rumoroso junto al Marne!
Continue reading...
Antonio Machado
Poema de un día.
Heme aquí ya, profesor
de lenguas vivas (ayer
maestro de gay-saber,
aprendiz de ruiseñor),
en un pueblo húmedo y frío,
destartalado y sombrío,
entre andaluz y manchego.Invierno. Cerca del fuego.
Fuera llueve un agua fina,
que ora se trueca en neblina,
ora se torna aguanieve.Fantástico labrador,
pienso en los campos.¡Señor
qué bien haces!  Llueve, llueve
tu agua constante y menuda
sobre alcaceles y habares,
tu agua muda,
en viñedos y olivares.Te bendecirán conmigo
los sembradores del trigo;
los que viven de coger
la aceituna;
los que esperan la fortuna
de comer;
los que hogaño,
como antaño,
tienen toda su moneda
en la rueda,
traidora rueda del año.¡Llueve, llueve; tu neblina
que se torne en aguanieve,
y otra vez en agua fina!¡Llueve, Señor, llueve, llueve!   En mi estancia, iluminada
por esta luz invernal
-la tarde gris tamizada
por la lluvia y el cristal-,
sueño y medito.                 Clarea
el reloj arrinconado,
y su tic-tic, olvidado
por repetido, golpea.Tic-tic, tic-tic... Ya te he oído.
Tic-tic, tic-tic... Siempre igual,
monótono y aburrido.Tic-tic, tic-tic, el latido
de un corazón de metal.En estos pueblos, ¿se escucha
el latir del tiempo?  No.En estos pueblos se lucha
sin tregua con el reló,
con esa monotonía
que mide un tiempo vacío.Pero ¿tu hora es la mía?
¿Tu tiempo, reloj, el mío?(Tic-tic, tic-tic...) Era un día
(Tic-tic, tic-tic) que pasó,
y lo que yo más quería
la muerte se lo llevó.   Lejos suena un clamoreo
de campanas...Arrecia el repiqueteo
de la lluvia en las ventanas.Fantástico labrador,
vuelvo a mis campos. ¡Señor,
cuánto te bendecirán
los sembradores del pan!Señor, ¿no es tu lluvia ley,
en los campos que ara el buey,
y en los palacios del rey?¡Oh, agua buena, deja vida
en tu huida!¡Oh, tú, que vas gota a gota,
fuente a fuente y río a río,
como este tiempo de hastío
corriendo a la mar remota,
en cuanto quiere nacer,
cuanto espera
florecer
al sol de la primavera,
sé piadosa,
que mañana
serás espiga temprana,
prado verde, carne rosa,
y más: razón y locura
y amargura
de querer y no poder
creer, creer y creer!   Anochece;
el hilo de la bombilla
se enrojece,
luego brilla,
resplandece
poco más que una cerilla.Dios sabe dónde andarán
mis gafas... entre librotes
revistas y papelotes,
¿quién las encuentra?... Aquí están.Libros nuevos. Abro uno
de Unamuno.¡Oh, el dilecto,
predilecto
de esta España que se agita,
porque nace o resucita!Siempre te ha sido, ¡oh Rector
de Salamanca!, leal
este humilde profesor
de un instituto rural.Esa tu filosofía
que llamas diletantesca,
voltaria y funambulesca,
gran don Miguel, es la mía.Agua del buen manantial,
siempre viva,
fugitiva;
poesía, cosa cordial.¿Constructora?-No hay cimiento
ni en el alma ni en el viento-.Bogadora,
marinera,
hacia la mar sin ribera.Enrique Bergson: Los datos
inmediatos
de la conciencia. ¿Esto es
otro embeleco francés?Este Bergson es un tuno;
¿verdad, maestro Unamuno?Bergson no da como aquel
Immanuel
el volatín inmortal;
este endiablado judío
ha hallado el libre albedrío
dentro de su mechinal.No está mal;
cada sabio, su problema,
y cada loco, su tema.Algo importa 
que en la vida mala y corta
que llevamos
libres o siervos seamos:
mas, si vamos
a la mar,
lo mismo nos ha de dar.¡Oh, estos pueblos!  Reflexiones,
lecturas y acotaciones
pronto dan en lo que son:
bostezos de Salomón.¿Todo es
soledad de soledades.
vanidad de vanidades,
que dijo el Eciesiastés?Mi paraguas, mi sombrero,
mi gabán...El aguacero
amaina...Vámonos, pues.   Es de noche. Se platica
al fondo de una botica.-Yo no sé,
don José,
cómo son los liberales
tan perros, tan inmorales.-¡Oh, tranquilícese usté!
Pasados los carnavales,
vendrán los conservadores,
buenos administradores
de su casa.Todo llega y todo pasa.
Nada eterno:
ni gobierno
que perdure,
ni mal que cien años dure.-Tras estos tiempos vendrán
otros tiempos y otros y otros,
y lo mismo que nosotros
otros se jorobarán.Así es la vida, don Juan.-Es verdad, así es la vida.
-La cebada está crecida.
-Con estas lluvias...
                    Y van
las habas que es un primor.
-Cierto; para marzo, en flor.
Pero la escarcha, los hielos...
-Y, además, los olivares
están pidiendo a los cielos
aguas a torrentes.
                  -A mares.¡Las fatigas, los sudores
que pasan los labradores!En otro tiempo...
                  Llovía
también cuando Dios quería.-Hasta mañana, señores.
  Tic-tic, tic-tic... Ya pasó
un día como otro día,
dice la monotonía
del reloj.   Sobre mi mesa Los datos
de la conciencia, inmediatos.No está mal
este yo fundamental,
contingente y libre, a ratos,
creativo, original;
este yo que vive y siente
dentro la carne mortal
¡ay! por saltar impaciente
las bardas de su corral.
Continue reading...
William Butler Yeats
Under Ben Bulben
I

SWEAR by what the sages spoke
Round the Mareotic Lake
That the Witch of Atlas knew,
Spoke and set the ***** a-crow.

Swear by those horsemen, by those women
Complexion and form prove superhuman,
That pale, long-visaged company
That air in immortality
Completeness of their passions won;
Now they ride the wintry dawn
Where Ben Bulben sets the scene.

Here s the gist of what they mean.

II
Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-diggers' toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong.
They but ****** their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

III
You that Mitchel's prayer have heard,
"Send war in our time, O Lord!'
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind,
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.

IV
Poet and sculptor, do the work,
Nor let the modish painter shirk
What his great forefathers did.
Bring the soul of man to God,
Make him fill the cradles right.

Measurement began our might:
Forms a stark Egyptian thought,
Forms that gentler phidias wrought.
Michael Angelo left a proof
On the Sistine Chapel roof,
Where but half-awakened Adam
Can disturb globe-trotting Madam
Till her bowels are in heat,
proof that there's a purpose set
Before the secret working mind:
Profane perfection of mankind.

Quattrocento put in paint
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul's at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream.
And when it's vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.
Gyres run on;
When that greater dream had gone
Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude,
Prepared a rest for the people of God,
Palmer's phrase, but after that
Confusion fell upon our thought.
V
Irish poets, earn your trade,
Sing whatever is well made,
Scorn the sort now growing up
All out of shape from toe to top,
Their unremembering hearts and heads
Base-born products of base beds.
Sing the peasantry, and then
Hard-riding country gentlemen,
The holiness of monks, and after
Porter-drinkers' randy laughter;
Sing the lords and ladies gay
That were beaten into the clay
Through seven heroic centuries;
Cast your mind on other days
That we in coming days may be
Still the indomitable Irishry.

VI
Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
Continue reading...
M Oct 2015
brand new / ben rector
like when I close my eyes and don't even care
if anyone sees me dancing
like I can fly, and I don't even think of touching the ground
like a heartbeat skip, like an open page
like a one way trip on an aeroplane.
leaps of faith in fall. this song reminds me a lot of how one begins to feel when the air starts getting colder.
Continue reading...
Michael R Burch Mar 2020
The Locker
The Locker
by Michael R. Burch

All the dull hollow clamor has died
and what was contained,
removed,

reproved
adulation or sentiment,
left with the pungent darkness

as remembered as the sudden light.

Originally published by The Raintown Review

These are poems about sports like baseball, basketball, boxing, football and soccer. Keywords/Tags: Sports, locker, locker room, clamor, adulation, acclaim, applause, sentiment, darkness, light, retirement, athlete, team, trophy, award, acclamation



Ali’s Song
by Michael R. Burch

They say that gold don’t tarnish. It ain’t so.
They say it has a wild, unearthly glow.
A man can be more beautiful, more wild.
I flung their medal to the river, child.
I flung their medal to the river, child.

They hung their coin around my neck; they made
my name a bridle, “called a ***** a *****.”
They say their gold is pure. I say defiled.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.
I flung their slave’s name to the river, child.

Ain’t got no quarrel with no Viet Cong
that never called me ******, did me wrong.
A man can’t be lukewarm, ’cause God hates mild.
I flung their notice to the river, child.
I flung their notice to the river, child.

They said, “Now here’s your bullet and your gun,
and there’s your cell: we’re waiting, you choose one.”
At first I groaned aloud, but then I smiled.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.
I gave their “future” to the river, child.

My face reflected up, more bronze than gold,
a coin God stamped in His own image—Bold.
My blood boiled like that river—strange and wild.
I died to hate in that dark river, child.
Come, be reborn in this bright river, child.

Published by Black Medina, Bashgah (Iran, in a Farsi translation), Other Voices International, Thanal Online (India), Freshet, Formal Verse, Borderless Journal, Interracial Love, and in a YouTube video by Lillian Y. Wong

Note: Cassius Clay, who converted to Islam and changed his “slave name” to Muhammad Ali, said that he threw his Olympic boxing gold medal into the Ohio River. When drafted during the Vietnamese War, Ali refused to serve, reputedly saying, “I ain't got no quarrel with those Viet Cong; no Vietnamese ever called me a ******.” I was told through the grapevine that this poem appeared in Farsi in a publication called Bashgah.



Me?
Whee!
(I stole this poem
From Muhammad Ali.)
—Michael R. Burch



hey pete!
by michael r. burch

for Pete Rose

hey pete,
it's baseball season
and the sun ascends the sky,
encouraging a schoolboy’s dreams
of winter whizzing by;
go out, go out and catch it,
put it in a jar,
set it on a shelf
and then
you'll be a Superstar.

Pete Rose was my favorite baseball player as a boy; this poem is not a slam at him, but rather ironic commentary on the term “superstar.”



Baseball's immeasurable spittin’ mixed with occasional hittin’.—Michael R. Burch



Larry Seivers had golden hands
by Michael R. Burch

Larry Seivers had golden hands,
platinum hands,
diamond hands,
hands of jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth and amethyst.

Other receivers were more elusive,
bigger,
faster,
more physical,
flashier ...

but Larry Seivers had hands.



Julius
by Michael R. Burch

Instinct
in an unplanned moment
as you rise
will teach your limbs the art of flight:
the waltz of light
through vaulted skies.

A falcon flies:
its keening cries
as sunlight fails
fall hollow to the earth below,
and you must know
how fierce the light of sunset feels.

You hear
those ringing cries, their echoes clear
though far away, and so you pause
—defying even gravity,
suspended over some vast sea—
then fall ... into applause.



Larry Legend
by Michael R. Burch

He's slow, can't jump,
looks pale and plump.
He talks too much;
he brags, and such.
He's not real nice,
has blood like ice
and will like steel
(and steal he will).
But when the game is on the line,
your team, or mine?



Big Mc Attack
by Michael R. Burch

Johnny Mc
Enroe
is back—
the fierce
attack
of words
and serves,
returns
and taunts.

He flaunts;
he flails,
reviles
and rails.
Sometimes
he wails.
His ego
swells.
He grunts
and groans
and moans
and gee . . .
I think
he wants
to referee!

Johnny Mc
(thank God)
is back—
wisecrack
ing, fiery,
taking flack
(not hesitant
to give it back).

We love
to watch
him glare
and wince,
and since we sense
his dreams
(intense),
we sit
on pins
until
he wins.



For Jack Nicklaus, at the 1987 Open
by Michael R. Burch

When you were young
every putt was makeable
and every dream remarkable;
the stars were unmistakable
you set your sights upon.

Then, in your youth,
time not yet a factor
and age not yet your rector,
you plotted every vector
and victory shone ahead, like truth.

But uncouth youth was fleeting ...
soon losses grew more numerous;
time's skies became more cumulus;
the nerves with age—more tremulous,
as the sun from the sky was setting, retreating.

How have you then, as sunset nears
and the world looks on with unsure eyes,
cast off the crutch of age to rise
and stand as though the butterflies
have no effect, no, nor the cheers?



I wrote this poem after Tom Watson chipped in at the 1982 US Open to defeat Jack Nicklaus. Nicklaus was getting older, but he was still competitive.

There Are Dreams
by Michael R. Burch

for Jack Nicklaus

There are dreams
that you have dreamed
that are etched into your eyes.

There are dreams
that you have dreamed
that resignation can’t disguise.

There are dreams
that you have dreamed . . .
O, I’ve dreamed them, esteemed them.

Like fire,
desire
flares most brightly as it dies.



Jimbo
by Michael R. Burch

for Jimmy Connors

Pounce like a panther,
all sinew and nerve;
attack, arched in anger,
your quarry—the serve.
Imagine a moment
of glory to come
as you lunge for the path
of its flight through the sun.

Are you a Templar
like warriors of old,
forsaking your loved ones,
crusading for gold?
Or could it be
need for fame drives you on?
Do you soak up the cheers
as you dash through the sun?

As you battle those younger,
those stronger, more fleet,
still none can be fiercer,
less yielding, complete.
Oh, what drives you onward,
what makes you compete?

I think not the riches, acclaim, even love . . .
but your heart is incentive enough.



The Great GOAT Debate
by Michael R. Burch

The great GOAT debate
can no longer wait:
we MUST know who’s best, and know NOW!

Is it Jordan, Kareem,
or Hakeem the Dream?
Is it Gretzky, the Rocket, or Howe?

Is it O.J. or Brady,
or are they too shady?
Tom Burleson or Monte Towe?

But now that I’m thinking
and done with my drinking,
before I make friends with a large purple cow ...

It’s the Babe, let’s get serious!
Babe Didrikson Zaharias!
Let the Ultimate GOAT take a bow.

Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias was a basketball All-American, a baseball and softball star, a professional golfer who accumulated ten major championships, and a track and field legend who won two gold medals and a silver in three different disciplines at the 1932 Olympics while setting four world records in the process. She was also an expert diver, roller-skater, bowler and billiards player. Didrikson won the 1932 AAU track and field team championships while competing as an individual, by winning five of the eight events she entered and finishing second in another. She remains the only track and field athlete, male or female, to have won individual Olympic medals in a running event (hurdles), a throwing event (javelin), and a jumping event (high jump). Despite taking up golf in her mid-twenties and having to wait until age 31 to regain her amateur status, Didrikson won 17 straight women's amateur tournaments, an unequaled feat. Altogether, she won 82 golf tournaments. She made the cut at two men’s PGA golf tournaments, the only woman to do so, and she did it sixty years before any other woman even tried. In 1934 exhibition games, after being taught the curve ball by Dizzy Dean, she pitched one scoreless inning against the Dodgers and two scoreless innings against the Indians. Didrikson still holds the world record for the longest baseball throw by a woman. The world has never seen anyone like her.

“She is beyond all belief until you see her perform ...Then you finally understand that you are looking at the most flawless section of muscle harmony, of complete mental and physical coordination, the world of sport has ever seen.” – Grantland Rice, considered by many to be the greatest sportswriter of all time



Ring-a-Ling Bling
by Michael R. Burch

The ring
thing
is mostly bling.

Determining an individual athlete's greatness by counting championship rings (i.e., team success) makes no sense to me and seems disrespectful to all-time greats like Ernie Banks, Charles Barkley, Elgin Baylor, **** Butkus, Ty Cobb, Michelle Kwan, Karl Malone, Dan Marino, Marta (who may be the greatest female soccer player of all time), Barry Sanders, John Stockton, Fran Tarkenton and Ted Williams. Perhaps the best example is the player most cited for rings these days: Michael Jordan. In reality, Jordan didn't win a ring his first six years and was 0-6 against
the Larry Bird Celtics and lost two more playoff series to the Isiah Thomas Pistons. Were Bird and Thomas the better players, or did they simply have better teams? The answer seems obvious.
Jordan only began to win rings after he was joined by outstanding players like Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, et al, and even then it took time for that team to jell. Jordan was a transcendentally great player before he won a ring. If he had failed to win rings because he never had good-enough teammates, would that make him a lesser player? Judging individuals by team success or failure makes no sense, unless Jordan was a lesser player for six years while his teams struggled and then he miraculously became the GOAT when more capable players showed up. Ditto for LeBron James. The first thing he does after changing teams is use his influence to get better players to join him. LeBron is not foolish enough to believe rings are won by individuals.



The Ring Thing (is entirely Bling)
by Michael R. Burch

The ring
thing
is entirely bling.

Michael Jordan was zero-for-six
against the Larry Bird Celtics;
moreover he was twice sent home
by Isiah’s Pistons;
his ring case only began to gleam
when he had Horace, Scottie and B.J. on his team.

Thus the ring
thing
is bling.



The Ballad of King Henry the Great
(aka Derrick Henry)
by Michael R. Burch

Long live the King!
Send him victorious,
happy and glorious,
long to reign over us:
Long live the King!

Long live the King!
Send him like Sherman tanks
Mowing down cornerbacks,
Stiff-arming tiny ants:
Long live the King!



No T.O.
by Michael R. Burch

Lines written after the aptly-named Eric Eager said, “A. J. Brown is Terrell Owens.”

I’m young, I’m big-hearted,
but I’m just getting started.

I’m running my own race
at my own **** pace.

T.O. belongs in fabled Canton town,
but I’m A. J. Brown.

The second stanza was actually written by A. J. Brown, a budding poet, and published in the form of a tweet.



Charlie Hustle
by Michael R. Burch

for Pete Rose

Crouch at the plate,
intensity itself.

Follow the flight
of the streak of white
with avid eyes
and a heartfelt urge
to let it fly.

Sweep the short arc,
feel the crack of a clean hit,
pound the earth
toward first.

Edge into the base path,
eyes relentlessly relentless.

Watch his every movement;
feel his every thought;
forget all save his feet;
see him stretch
toward the plate ...
and fly!

Fly along the basepath
churning up the dirt,
desire in your eyes.

Slide around the outstretched glove,
hear the throaty cry,
"He's safe!"
And lie in a puddle of sunlight
soaking up the cheers.

A Texas Leaguer dropping
to the left-field side of center
sends you on your way back home.

Take the turn past third
with fervor in your eyes
and a fever in your step,
the game just strides away ...
take them all and then
slide your patented head-first slide
across the guarded plate.

Pause in the dust of your desires,
loving the feel of the scalding sun
and the roar of the crowd.

Shake your head and tip your cap
toward the clouds.

Slap the dirt
from your grass-stained shirt
and head toward the clubhouse ...
just doing your job,
but loving it
because it is your life.

This was an early attempt at free verse, written in my teens.



The Sliding Rule
by Michael R. Burch

If you’re not quite kosher,
like Leo Durocher;
or if you have a Pinocchio nose,
like Peter Edward Rose;
or if your life turns tragic,
like Ervin Johnson’s magic;
or if your earthly heaven
is stopped, like Howe’s, at seven;
or if you’re a disciplinarian
like Knight, but also a contrarian;
or if like Joe you’re shoeless
because you’re also clueless;
or perhaps like Iron Mike Tyson
you work a little vice in;
or like Daly working the jackpot
you’re less unlucky than merely a crackpot;
or like Ruth you’re better at drinking
than at dieting and thinking;
or perhaps like Andre Agassi’s
your triumphs are really your tragedies . . .
though The Judge might call you a sinner,
society’ll proclaim you a WINNER!



Tremble
by Michael R. Burch

Her predatory eye,
the single feral iris,
scans.

Her raptor beak,
all jagged sharp-edged ******,
juts.

Her hard talon,
clenched in pinched expectation,
waits.

Her clipped wings,
preened against reality,
tremble.

Published by The Lyric, Verses Magazine, Romantics Quarterly, Journeys, The Raintown Review, Poetic Ponderings, Poem Kingdom, The Fabric of a Vision, NPAC—Net Poetry and Art Competition, Poet’s Haven, Listening To The Birth Of Crystals (Anthology), Poetry Renewal, Inspirational Stories, Poetry Life & Times, MahMag (Iranian/Farsi), The Eclectic Muse

Keywords/Tags: Tremble, predator, raptor, hawk, eagle, falcon, talon, beak, wing, preen, preened, preening



Y2k: The Score
by Michael R. Burch

You should have known
when you were giving us wedgies,
pulling down our pants
in front of the cheerleaders,
playing frisbee with our slide rules . . .

that the years are exceedingly cruel.

You should have seen,
dashing across the gridiron
(as the cheerleaders screamed
in a *****-show of ecstasy),
playing the hero, the bull-necked **** . . .

the hands on the face of the unimpressed clock.

Though you were popular,
the backseat Romeo, the star
who drove the flashiest car,
though you lived out our dream
and took the prettiest girls to the dances, the prom . . .

you never had a chance.  Something was wrong.

We missed the big dances and proms
as we hissed and we schemed,
as we wrote and re-wrote our revenge
while you partied like Stonehenge.
Now your business is in debt to the hilt.
It’s too late to cry: Foul! Unsportsmanlike! Tilt!

One statement of ours and yours are all lost!
Your receivables, aging and gathering dust,
will yellow like ***** one soon-coming day.
While you were scoring, you missed this play—

Jocks: Zero. Nerds: Y2k.



Ordinary Love
by Michael R. Burch

Indescribable—our love—and still we say
with eyes averted, turning out the light,
"I love you," in the ordinary way

and tug the coverlet where once we lay,
all suntanned limbs entangled, shivering, white ...
indescribably in love. Or so we say.

Your hair's blonde thicket now is tangle-gray;
you turn your back; you murmur to the night,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Beneath the sheets our hands and feet would stray
to warm ourselves. We do not touch despite
a love so indescribable. We say

we're older now, that "love" has had its day.
But that which Love once countenanced, delight,
still makes you indescribable. I say,
"I love you," in the ordinary way.

Winner of the 2001 Algernon Charles Swinburne poetry contest; published by The Lyric, Romantics Quarterly, Mandrake Poetry Review, Carnelian, Poem Kingdom, Net Poetry and Art Competition, Famous Poets and Poems, FreeXpression, PW Review, Poetic Voices, Poetry Renewal and Poetry Life & Times
#sports #locker #lockerroom #clamor #adulation #acclaim #applause #sentiment #darkness #light
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Elizabeth Squires Aug 2013
Memory
a friend of mine popped in the other day
to have a chat
we got to talking about the town's past history
and more especially about one of the Church of England vicars
she had a litany of information
relating to his many female conquests
he'd been playing around
quite a lot during his period
as the local rector
one day he was caught inside the church
with his pants down
he was administering
to one of his female parishioners
behind the altar
the fellow who used to do the light maintenance
was most astound at seeing such close contact between
the vicar and a member of his flock
a few days after this occurred
the Bishop of the diocese informed the vicar
that he was going to be sacked
for his indecent conduct within the walls
of a place of God
the female parishioner
was given her marching orders
by her infuriated husband
my friend and I like talking about our town's past history
as there are some events
which are truly worth recalling  
to memory
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JP Goss Jan 2015
Sketches of the Hand
Even the diviner was bemused by these channels, lost in my palm
Amidst the faults and erosions the like as November
Where, banal, it caught these skipping stones, day-to-day, arranged
For the radical saccades to pass, engross, my attention through the magic,
I now stare at Delphi, what binds the assumed catches
Bound, itself, to shy
To shy away from their centers.

But, now and then, my eyes will sojourn from my wanton ways
Through terraces of an empty map,
Where, by degrees, are shown their invisibilities in place of illustrations
Accoutered as décor, but fact, hastening a spider’s game:
Fixed in a drawer, renewed, splayed, drawn at constant.

These pickings, righteous, at a nail and toying on a salty lip,
Quiver, from the rector, day and night, pronouncing
Idle me, idolatry, standing at spreading concourse,
Till, evermore, my stumbling thoughts lose themselves
In my hand.

The hand.
The palm.
Lost channels flood themselves silt-rich waters boatful and boastful
Take on the name of fjord and trinity,
At which I stand, beside myself, and him, beside himself
More engrossed by far-flung ecstasies,
Quite-clear those instabilities, reaching for liquor—mid-shelf.

I could, perhaps, blind myself to the valleys—simple marked sleight of hand
But, travail those four peaks and their straining caps of snow
Unknown, it is but the larger picture, sewn to sinew runs of hair.

Too much, I plead for direction or sign, getting lost in mirrors or rhyme
These new utterances in the back of my throat, where, precisely,
Is the seat of pride,
Each a reckless trail back to the temples of uncharted weathered skin
—The vaguenesses that she enthralled, as to what I am read
Thinking nothing at all and, he, the friend of ever
Under the same stars to the north, south, in every direction.
So helpless, cold shaking and pensions of the moon, anon,
I read as the distance, empty candescences that thirst to know
Exactly what they should have known, where clairvoyance falls short
Steps, like quite brushstrokes: one at a time, wide, unending.
#self #lost #hands #magic #confusion #maps
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Xavier Paolo Josh Mandreza Jul 2013
SONNET TRIBUTE SUNDRY - TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FOUR - TOM DALEY
So many Facts, yet with Tales interpret
Infect this Cause on what we should Believe
The Rector's Bells; Or the Psalmist's Perspect
Preach to Define the Aspartamine's relieve
That this World-on-Swirl base our Morals gauge
And deny the Worthy the Gifts they Deserve
Since Paint their Walls green; Then pause their Smiles fade
To sour the Jellies by their Conserve
At least for your Grace: Breathe your Milestones well
Knowing such Skin beneath a Youthful Orb
Of Smoking Clouds or Rowdy Skies befell
Reap Divine Benefits by your Absorb.
This Speech too Blown - too Televised release
If Words un-reviewed provoke War or Peace.

‬
‪#‎tomdaley1994‬ ‪#‎tomdaleytv
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Emma Clocks Jun 2013
Ben and Jerry's Cant Make You Come Back to Me
Losing you cant be fixed with Ben and Jerry's or any number of Coldplay songs.
But still I sit here and listen to sad songs, and reblog for hours on end.
Because tumblr seems to know me better then anyone in reality.
I guess I like listening to these songs because they share the same experiences as me.
And I guess I'm too scared to find other people in my life who share the same problems.
I swear to God, Ben Rector and I have twin lives.
When I hear these songs I almost forget about everything else.
When A Heart Breaks might just be my life story.
I could rant on about my favorite artists but it wouldn't be worth it.
But I wont.
I will end with this: No matter how much a girl tries to forget something she cant, no matter how hard she tries. Because what happened, mattered. And all she can do is hope that it mattered to you. Because you cant forget something that mattered.
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KD Miller May 2016
Michael
short story  i wrote in 11/1/2014*

Decomposing sewer rat- that's the smell that will always remind me of her.
A tow colored ponytail, pulled back tautly with the smallish bobby pins holding down her page bangs, would greet me every time I walked into the cafeteria at lunch. She was a new kid, a sophmore, and I didn't know her name. She sat alone by the big red painted double doors. Everyone in the school wanted to get out-  but she seemed to always be smiling. It was my second semester of senior year, after winter break, after weeks of seeing the same girl sitting alone and never seeing her hair down that I decided to finally sit down next to her. The way she ignored my varsity jacket was striking- though it was my older brother's, the football team's logo always seemed to impress new girls who didn't know any better. She just kept on eating her yogurt. And then she looked to her right. And she kept on smiling. 'Hello, and your name is...?'
'Mike,' I offered my hand. And you? She just said her name was J.
I took it but wasn't satisfied. She went on to tell me she was new, from Burlington, Vermont- that she hated Scarsdale. And the bell rung. I went home that night endlessly calculating what the J could've stood for- Jennifer? Jessica? June? Jessica had me by the heels and she held me upside down. It took me days and days and finally a week and finally even a month to convince June that we should see each other outside of school. And then it took me that night taking out the trash to find out that Jennifer lived three doors away from me in a huge limestone manor. Then it took me the next day to convince her that- hey- tomorrow is a Friday, why not do something?
June said yes, put her sweater sleeve to her hand. I read once in a European studies textbook that in Elizabethan playhouses, they would sell orange rinds in little tea bags for people to hold up to their noses- the smell of all the people who didn't know about washing was so nauseating. It was ten pm when she called me that night and told me her parents would be in the Catskills and she hadn't seen my parent's cars in our driveway- so why not go to the city?
I took it in careful consideration that lasted approximately 5 seconds. I said yes si and da in every language possible. Something told me to go with her. I thought of the way she always smiled whether it was wide or wan and I could hardly wait for Friday night at 10pm.
The next day we drove to the city in her Audi cabriolet. I played New Order- but we didn't get to the city in the time we expected. The woods seemed to go on to the tune of the Perfect Kiss.
But by Face Up, we were in the city. We'd parallel parked in front of some bar  and made our way around. Then halfway through the sidewalk she asked. "Can we ride the subway?" I nodded. I supposed a Vermont girl had never seen New York City anyways. We took the R train at Rector until the end of the line. Then we went home. After that day, She went home after she dropped me off. I didn't find out what J meant or was and then it took three days to see that Jessica's house was actually just a forest. There was no limestone. It felt real, the riding the R train and the music in our ears  and even the yogurt she had eaten. But it took the next morning to monday to see there had never been a girl named J and the table was empty. It hadn't been a dream but I had to wonder if it was even real. But the other day I was on my way to Lexington  and I had sworn to god i'd seen her on the rails- on the rails! I cried for help but everyone just stared. Then I grabbed my briefcase and decided to go home instead of work for the day.
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brandon nagley May 2015
iniquitates ficut( iniquities sequester) latin dialect
This multiplying illness complexes this weariness,
Ominous steers for you,
A three tiered system is written in the hearts of dispysing old *******,
Not soon yet,
Not soon after!
Climaxing evildoer's initiate in iniquities triangles love affair,
Many go thine distance,
While the darers do dare!!
Clean slates thou wilt not find in a confine of magic fairy tale cells,
I'm sick combusted of all energies,
I feel that bursting flame raising of hell!!!
Chestnut beans boil near by one,
Some play on open courts,
While others believe in freedom of pistol ranged fun!!!!!
No extinguisher to put out volcanic smoke,
Wickans to quick ones,
No lighter to spark thine throat!!!!
Pleasures are shamefully no fun here,
Even amongst thine own kind your a diseased plague,
Of settled bacteria!!!!
Hysteria entereth ones mind to rid him the twinge of this vivification!
Forget wrong and right,
You knoweth neither,
Unborn one!!!!!

Thou art a star of creation,
A rector to all nations,
The moon, the earth, thy sun!!!!

Captured beauty thou art,
Thou photographic film you!!!!!
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Donall Dempsey Aug 2018
A SINGLE GREEN LIGHT
A SINGLE GREEN LIGHT

Time slows down
so that your funeral

and the funeral of your character
become as one.

The same unremitting rain
...hardly anyone came.

Dorothy Parker echoes
the end of your book

"The poor *******!"
This The Great Fitzgearld.

The Episcopalian rector declaims
that the only reason he gave the service

"..was to get the body
in the ground."

He speaks of you as
"a no-good, drunken ***

the world was well rid
of him."

As if the faded eyes
of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

gazed down mercilessly
upon your soul

What was it Scott
the Good Book said?

Corinthians something something
or other:

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen...

since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal."

You the great writer of
the eternal unseen.

Now you walk about
in the wonder of all your words.
Continue reading...
Donall Dempsey Aug 2022
A SINGLE GREEN LIGHT
A SINGLE GREEN LIGHT

Time slows down
so that your funeral

and the funeral of your character
become as one.

The same unremitting rain
...hardly anyone came.

Dorothy Parker echoes
the end of your book

"The poor *******!"
This The Great Fitzgerald.

The Episcopalian rector declaims
that the only reason he gave the service

"..was to get the body
in the ground."

He speaks of you as
"a no-good, drunken ***

the world was well rid
of him."

As if the faded eyes
of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg

gazed down mercilessly
upon your soul

What was it Scott
the Good Book said?

Corinthians something something
or other:

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen...

since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal."

You the great writer of
the eternal unseen.

Now you walk about
in the wonder of all your words.


*

The burial of F. Scott Fitzgerald crossed with the burial of Gatsby...fiction and reality mingling....Jay Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald now merged into one,
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KV Srikanth Jan 2021
THE CONVENT
Brother had graduated
With distinction
Easily obtained
Kindergarten Admission

Already done
Started good
At another school
With A thatched roof


Father Rector
Vaguely remember.
English Language Skills
Written and spoken
Was the intention
For a Convent Education

The first school
Just off the ground
Hop skip and jump
From home

Virtue in Difficulty
Motto enforced with authority
Back of beyond
The oven a bear to clean
The school of hard knocks
14 years
Hornets Nest
4 year kid
Put to test

Every year
A cross to bear
Every teacher
A nightmare

Atmosphere Anxious
Psychosis cheek by jowl with
Feel the heat
Skip a beat
Learn it all
Before you are 3 feet tall

Every Monday
Cloud on the Horizon
Tuesday
Better left unsaid
Wednesday
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Thursdays
Hammer and anvil
Fridays
Thank god it is

Discipline and Education
Was the Motivation
Real or Mask
I'm yet to Unmask

Boys Ranked
Made to feel inferior
Fail a subject
Humiliate Parent  
For kid not being perfect
Boys branded
Humiliation  indidnity
Insult to injury
Nuremberg trials shorter
Silently stand there
Standard Convent fare

Provocative Attire
By the teacher
Didn't make matters better
Students imbibed earlier
Than required by law of nature
Sexuality brazen
Ahead of the curve
Gradation of *******
Affected permanently
Mental stability
View of women
Totally in contradiction
Damaged forever
Lasted till wedlock
Wedlock did not last

No room for sth
Beyond the pale
A square peg in a round hole
Puritanism produced swivel eyed zealots
Pursued their mania with little sense of proportion

Higher classes
No better
Tight leash
Grip never eased
Termination threatened
Repeat a year warned

Having to endure
Performance preasure
Nervous breakdown
Not uncommon
Common in classes
Standard 10 and Twelwe
Every day a living hell

Spare the rod
Spoil the child
Idiom for conduct
In this school invented

Untidy Attire
Consequences dire
Late to school
Flatten your soul
Talk in class
Break you like glass
Tarnished shoe
Wrist turns blue
Study material
Not in order
No escaping the clobber
Time at Alcatraz
A Concert of Jazz
Holidays a parole
Graduation day
Jackrabbit Parole
Diesel ride
No more required

Fourteen years
Buck Rogers time
Rigorous Relentless
Souls broken
With precision

Served *** Beef
At the Cuckoos Nest
Doing the Dutch
Break Fluids
Considered once
Watch the wind or
Bark at the Moon
World weary
Experience equals
That of a
Vietnam Vet
Faced many a bullet
But we at the convent
Had to endure
Nurse Ratched
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— The End —