"roe" poems
there’s a barnacle scar
deeply ingrained
on the basalt stack
at mark thirty two
whispering summer winds
scented oil
cotton and roe
drift
as waves brush
and shape
the sandstone shore
the briny air
and lost erratic
set a tone to this
pollyanna portrait
it's andrews undulations
and gifted benches
its concessions
and traces of the barry burn
its sculpted driftwood
and sanko lines
make this picture
almost perfect
children play
as venom spews
from the caterwaul pair
those odd looking mates
casting smiles
with arrested despair
settling shots
swiping bugs
dipping and darting
as photo men
and muscles
and long neck seabirds
make their turn
the hunched hoody
and his sorted sidekick
get their fill
(of moss and rubble ~ chubby and kelp)
nice to meet your acquaintance
the pho man would say
an odd drop
and ironic turn
from those horrific corners
of timeless desperation
down by cannon bridge
harbor seals
and carriage horse
are fronted by
raven shade
jolly tides pause
in quiet bays
(with curious looters
and *** pickers)
sand merchants
and field totems
all streamed by the light
cirrus strands
blanket the
outer edge
hovering craft
and shimmering willows
bolt the evening frame
blood orange
and tethered
with a filtered glare
bottle-nose dolphins
and seabirds
(and shifting tides)
are all settling in
for the long night stay
Mar 9, 2017
Mar 9, 2017 at 11:21 PM UTC
for Susan O'Neill Roe
What a thrill ----
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to ****
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux ****
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump ----
Trepanned veteran,
***** girl,
Thumb stump.
23.5k
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer;
A-chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I go.
20.3k
Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at ***
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!
6.7k
A seemingly fine day ruined with one headline.
Then another. And another. And by the time my phone stops buzzing the news couldn't be any clearer.
We lost a battle today. A battle for basic humanity, a battle to our own autonomy.
"Women" lost. "Women" should be afraid. "Women". "Women". "Women".
Every headline I read talks about how scary the world is for women.
Yes, the world is scary for women...or anyone with a ******
I don't want to make this about me. Because it's not. It's about every transgender man that fights for healthcare on a daily basis. It's about every non-binary person assigned female at birth who can get pregnant.
and yes....it's about women.
It's about people (men and women) who think their ideals should determine what I do with my body.
It's about every pastor, minister, judge, and human being who feels they have a say in how my life is lived.
Poetry has always been and will always be political.
Poetry is art and art is expression of feeling.
Today....I'm ******
I'm overwhelmed with a feeling of dread.
The same feeling of dread I felt during the 2016 election.
The same feeling of dread I felt the night of the Pulse Orlando shootings.
The same feeling of dread I feel every time I think of wearing my trans pride shirt out in public.
I'm not afraid to say how absolutely terrified I am....I'm just afraid for whatever is coming next.
Sincerely,
- Your friendly ****** having transman.
Jun 24, 2022
Jun 24, 2022 at 10:26 PM UTC
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of us all?
Skin so delicate and fair
Blue eyes and long black hair
A good king, a good daughter
A wicked stepmother
One day full of gloom and dread
When The Wicked heard it said
"The Daughter is the fairest,
O' dear! You are second best!"
The Wicked was wild with jelousy
And begun plotting conspiracy
Getting rid of the fair lady
Was the wicked plan of the day
The Wicked called on her servant
The name was **** Cindy
Bribed her with riches women want
Promised her a gift of beauty
So **** Cindy and The Daughter
Went into the depth of the forest
**** Cindy has led the pretty girl
She surely must put her to death!
Our **** Cindy however
Found the girl a thing of beauty
**** Cindy's courage betrayed her
Excused herself and ran away
The pretty daughter was left alone
Terribly scared but still alive
Tears fell as she thought of home
Doubtful if she will ever survive
**** Cindy returned to the castle
Showing a heart of a roe deer
And served as a loyal vassal
To The Ever Wicked stepmother
So **** Cindy got rewarded
With unimaginable riches
Lasting beauty she was awarded
At last she got her wishes
At night our **** Cindy
Her riches, all she gathered
And then she vanished swiftly
Away from The Ever Wicked
Meanwhile the pretty daughter
Found a place to stay
That house was full of laughter
And the rest was history
Highly pleased now The Wicked
Turned again to the mirror
But her hopes became unsettled
After the unpleasant cheer
She must die! She must die!
Went The Wicked's awful cry
She became an old peasant
Killed the girl with a poison
And so the pretty daughter
Laid in the forest for days
The cute house lost its laughter
The Wicked went on her ways
The sad news reached the town
And to our **** Cindy
So she wore her sexiest gown
And started on her journey
Into the forest she went
Looking for that pretty girl
Her heart skipped and bent
Feeling that awesome thrill
**** Cindy found The Daughter
Lying on a wooden bed
"Thy beauty is oh, so rare!"
Was the thought inside her head
She could not help but wet her lips
Staring at the sleeping lady
She felt a tingle below her hips
And sensation inside her belly
They said no man can wake the girl
And maybe no man really can?
So **** Cindy kissed The Daughter
And so her passion has began
The kiss was oddly very awesome
And it stirred the sleeping girl
It brought a funny slurpy sound
Waking up The Royal Daughter
"Oh God! Oh my! Oh my!
Oh my beautiful princess!
Take my hand, come with me
Away from this very place!"
So **** Cindy and The Daughter
They ran away together
Across the land of nowhere
Where they lived happily ever after
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
Who is the fairest of us all?
"Snow and Cindy are the fairest
O' dear! Now you're the third best!"
~THE END~
Jan 11, 2013
Jan 11, 2013 at 12:51 AM UTC
Lays of Mystery,
Imagination, and Humor
Number 1
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.
Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze.
Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere.
One showed a vain and noisy ****
That shouted empty words and big
At him that nodded in a wig.
And one, a dotard grim and gray,
Who wasteth childhood's happy day
In work more profitless than play.
Whose icy breast no pity warms,
Whose little victims sit in swarms,
And slowly sob on lower forms.
And one, a green thyme-honoured Bank,
Where flowers are growing wild and rank,
Like weeds that fringe a poisoned tank.
All birds of evil omen there
Flood with rich Notes the tainted air,
The witless wanderer to snare.
The fatal Notes neglected fall,
No creature heeds the treacherous call,
For all those goodly Strawn Baits Pall.
The wandering phantom broke and fled,
Straightway I saw within my head
A vision of a ghostly bed,
Where lay two worn decrepit men,
The fictions of a lawyer's pen,
Who never more might breathe again.
The serving-man of Richard Roe
Wept, inarticulate with woe:
She wept, that waiting on John Doe.
"Oh rouse", I urged, "the waning sense
With tales of tangled evidence,
Of suit, demurrer, and defence."
"Vain", she replied, "such mockeries:
For morbid fancies, such as these,
No suits can suit, no plea can please."
And bending o'er that man of straw,
She cried in grief and sudden awe,
Not inappropriately, "Law!"
The well-remembered voice he knew,
He smiled, he faintly muttered "Sue!"
(Her very name was legal too.)
The night was fled, the dawn was nigh:
A hurricane went raving by,
And swept the Vision from mine eye.
Vanished that dim and ghostly bed,
(The hangings, tape; the tape was red happy
'Tis o'er, and Doe and Roe are dead!
Oh, yet my spirit inly crawls,
What time it shudderingly recalls
That horrid dream of marble halls!
5.5k
Venezia, its musical key of brick and shade
And the canals in rejoining polyphony
Sweeten the dour Church-ear.
From the impasto knife and loose brushwork,
A thumb-smear of waves and gently-bristled strife
Rise to assumption of the cloud-submerged bay,
Mural of cristallo, only-light without landscape,
Made too from the winds of Murano,
Its clayed blowpipe of waterways molding
The lagoon of blown glass and bouquet of colored sea-shadows.
The Tiber lies on its side, like the lion and fox,
Licking its paws at empire’s dust,
A drifting gaze of water that already foresees
The swift-run northward to Romagna,
Where the veined fur of the roe will succumb…
A ripple twitches like one dark claw of the Borgia…
The watercolors of the Arno are a fresco
On the wet plaster of the lips of Firenze, Tuscan fire-dream.
Or like the warring leg in curve of counterpoise,
Sprung foot-forward to the daring world
And arm slung down in stone-victory
From this valley, too much like Elah,
With taunting eyes turned from the Medici toward Rome.
May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019 at 10:06 AM UTC
Today is the anniversary of another trip around the sun for the woman I love more than any other.
Happy Birthday to my mother, Elise
who drew me a picture of the female reproductive system
and labeled the parts
and explained the process
of ************
before my body ever had a chance to frighten me
who taught me the word
******
and taught me that there was nothing silly, or shameful, or icky
about the word
or having one.
who taught me
that people are inherently the same
and humans are valuable
and the meaning of the word
humanity
and the value of justice
and the meaning of the word
"injustice"
and consistently confronted it
often uncomfortably
but un-apologetically
whenever we found ourselves in its presence
Who responded to compliments
about my appearance as a child
with humble disinterested grace
and taught me with intention
in everything she said and did
that what is valuable about me
is my mind
and my heart
kindness
spirit
ethics
righteousness
some may say too much of the latter
who taught me about Janis, and Sylvia, and Frida
and Roe v Wade
and punctuation and articulation and diction
and the Serenity Prayer, and that Galway Kinnel poem about what is still possible...
I love you Mom. I could go on forever. My love and my gratitude for you - and what you have gifted and instilled in me - is bigger than the universe and eternity and possibility.
So glad you are with the sweetest child in the whole wide world this evening.
Loving and sending you love and bright light so hard.
Micah Haverly 2015
Jun 7, 2015
Jun 7, 2015 at 5:38 PM UTC
274
The only Ghost I ever saw
Was dressed in Mechlin—so—
He wore no sandal on his foot—
And stepped like flakes of snow—
His Gait—was soundless, like the Bird—
But rapid—like the Roe—
His fashions, quaint, Mosaic—
Or haply, Mistletoe—
His conversation—seldom—
His laughter, like the Breeze—
That dies away in Dimples
Among the pensive Trees—
Our interview—was transient—
Of me, himself was shy—
And God forbid I look behind—
Since that appalling Day!
4.1k
This is the time lean woods shall spend
A steeped-up twilight, and the pale evening drink,
And the perilous roe, the leaper to the west brink,
Trembling and bright to the caverned cloud descend.
Now shall you see pent oak gone gusty and frantic,
Stooped with dry weeping, ruinously unloosing
The sparse disheveled leaf, or reared and tossing
A dreary scarecrow bough in funeral antic.
Then, tatter you and rend,
Oak heart, to your profession mourning; not obscure
The outcome, not crepuscular; on the deep floor
Sable and gold match lustres and contend.
And rags of shrouding will not muffle the slain.
This is the immortal extinction, the priceless wound
Not to be staunched. The live gold leaks beyond,
And matter’s sanctified, dipped in a gold stain.
3.3k
Beloved, may your sleep be sound
That have found it where you fed.
What were all the world's alarms
To mighty paris when he found
Sleep upon a golden bed
That first dawn in Helen's arms?
Sleep, beloved, such a sleep
As did that wild Tristram know
When, the potion's work being done,
Roe could run or doe could leap
Under oak and beechen bough,
Roe could leap or doe could run;
Such a sleep and sound as fell
Upon Eurotas' grassy bank
When the holy bird, that there
Accomplished his predestined will,
From the limbs of Leda sank
But not from her protecting care.
2.8k
I went into the woods today
to feed the little birds
the squirrel in his little drey
and the roe deer in their herds
went in feeling confident
walked out tired and grey
now I need some counselling
and this is what I'll say!
Those little ******* birdies
had set a trap for me
dug a hole with mickey the mole
they knew I would't see
fell right down
and bashed my head
they laughed so much,
thought I was dead
all they wanted was my seed
No! not my *****
Oh, please take heed
the rabbits kicked earth into the hole
****** lagomorphs got no soul
except for hares
they are classier
even though
the females are sassier
I climbed back out
the birds got miffed
"there is no doubt,
he must be biffed!"
so into the fray
they sent their trump
a ****** great stag
to give me a thump
spent ten minutes dodging round
running like a good'un
until I ran into a tree
solid and pretty wooden
"my sodding nose,
that ****** hurt!
I'm bleeding down
into the dirt!"
tough they told me
with their eyes
that tree will cut you
down to size!
I got away at half past six
how was purely luck
I fed the stag some weetabix
and he got hit by a truck
So now we're having venison
and gravy for our tea
and if I go to the woods again
I'll take some friends with me!
Jan 19, 2011
Jan 19, 2011 at 11:00 AM UTC
Redds shine like new nickels on the dark river bottom,
salmon have returned to spawn the Deschutes,
navigating by primal memories written in DNA,
an internal Tom-Tom GPS wired in their brains.
Watching them struggle up the ladder,
consumed with a drive to leave offspring,
they are herculean athletes battling
the current and the inexorable pull of gravity.
Were these the fry I helped to seed four years ago?
A Squaxin woman told me once,
ghosts of her Coastal Salish ancestors
ride the salmon out to sea and home again.
Roe in these redds dream also of the sea,
their salty eyes and nostrils perceiving
spirits in secret claret-red kelp beds.
The waters ask only to be haunted again.
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 5:20 PM UTC
Dear Emma Watson -
Shall we make love
The object of
Our spiritual quest
Together?
Surely an altogether
Better option
Than pairing you off
In a commentary box
With one John Motson
Discussing twenty two
Pairs of socks
Chasing a piece of leather?
If spiritual questing
Is not for you
I will make do
With tightly tied pairs of shoes
Existential emus,
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Whilst hoping you find
Your Sherlock Holmes,
Miss Watson
I will content myself with
Cataloguing my collection of
Black and white combs.
I also have plots on
Which I need to work -
Wednesday Addams's love of
Moon dried tomatoes
Or Erica Roe
Somewhere in Portugal
Growing sweet potatoes
For sale.
Don't let anyone tell you
There ain't no perks
To being an Omega Male.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 8:01 AM UTC
Until I turned nineteen,
I never considered where I had been.
I couldn't be seen.
As I have never been on the scene.
Every morrow, I called out to my aunt
To express my love,
and welcome a cup of tea
That is dear to me.
"I hailed to thee,
Aunty, tea."
When she delays a little,
I became a prattle.
A mature lady smiles and places a cup of tea
What a great human is she!
As I had to traverse to another city,
I had to shift to a hostel that had no tea
Not a day did I receive
A mere cup of tea.
Every morrow, every eve,
All I yearn about is only her and I.
Like a mother, the love she showered.
Like a roe,
Neither did I apprehend
Nor did I reciprocate.
Here my mind does thoroughly replicate.
.... TEA....
Every morrow, every eve
I buy tea,
Just by paying the fee
which I used to get for free.
Not lovingly calling Aunty tea
But,
To an unrelated shopkeeper
Asking, 'Bhaiyah Tea'.
Apr 25, 2023
Apr 25, 2023 at 6:25 AM UTC
What the faugh?
Appoint that braugh?
Barfin’ in the haugh?
“I like beer here;
In the hall—
Keggin’ legend y’all”
Teenage hijinks
Predator some think
From the calumny calendar
“Appoint me;
Don’t disappoint me;
This is my drunken call!”
“No single appointment here
No, just one issue (snicker)…
Roe? Wade? It’s clear as beer!”
Supporters of this supreme
You really needn’t get this meme;
You want him for one thing
“You don’t like me;
I am a lying pig—
But my r.v.w will stick”
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 12:45 AM UTC
Cuando tango la zampoña
cuando tango el sacabuche,
jamás pienso en quien me escuche
ni en quien me allane la moña. 1
Y así la zampoña taño, 2
pizzico así la vihuela
cantando mi cantinela
como trovero de antaño...
Yo no pienso en quién me escuche.
Yo no pienso en quien me loe
ni en quien el talón me roe
cuando tango el sacabuche,
cuando soplo en el obóe,
cuando tango la zampoña.
Ni en buscar el sortilegio
-con glisado tal o arpegioque
embelece a daifa o doña,
cuando tango el sacabuche...
Cuando soplo en el obóe,
cuando soplo en la dulzaina,
no pienso en boina ni en vaina;
ni en Burdeos o en Borgoña
cuando tango la zampoña-
Cuando soplo en la dulzaina
y si percuto el adufe
no pienso en que vozne o bufe
ni el cretino ni el tontaina
ni el doctorado en Lovaina.
Cuando tango la zampoña,
si pizzico en la bandurria
no me importa ni la murria
que me enerva y emponzoña.
Cuando tango el sacabuche,
cuando raspo el bandolín
ni cuando froto el violín,
yo no pienso en quien me escuche.
Si resoplo en el fagote,
si taño la cornamusa,
cuando tango la zampoña,
cuando soplo en la ocarina
no pienso en daifa ni en doña
(si me alabe o me abomina,
si se enfada o se alborote...)
Si taño la cornamusa,
laude pido o doy excusa
jamás, ni a Apolo ni al zote
ni a la mismísima Musa
de alto copete o de moña,
ni a Luis de Góngora Argote,
si resoplo en el fagote,
cuando tango la zampoña.
1.9k
They take nothing
for its simple meaning
Its a need
they can never be relieved
of it
with the right shove
unintended or crafted
you can get them
to throw their cards
on the table
They are unable to relent
this building
where you pay rent
wander the halls
for a few fleeting hours
and leave
as you please
This Utopia you praise
to them it is a prison
and you are all
innocent roe
A delicate dish
for the bigger fish
Look out guppy
that shark
he just hacked your camera.
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 5:12 PM UTC
Last night
I heard the tap and hum
of haddock mating in the deep.
They dive,
it seems, to distant depths
as if the atmospheric weight
could tense
their roe to spasm forth
and in the sport of lowly spawn
they beat
the rattle of a drum
as baritone cicadas might.
In lust,
with rhythms from the flesh,
they thread the needled cloth of night
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 7:53 PM UTC
Where once the waters of your face
Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows,
The dead turns up its eye;
Where once the mermen through your ice
Pushed up their hair, the dry wind steers
Through salt and root and roe.
Where once your green knots sank their splice
Into the tided cord, there goes
The green unraveller,
His scissors oiled, his knife hung loose
To cut the channels at their source
And lay the wet fruits low.
Invisible, your clocking tides
Break on the lovebeds of the weeds;
The **** of love's left dry;
There round about your stones the shades
Of children go who, from their voids,
Cry to the dolphined sea.
Dry as a tomb, your coloured lids
Shall not be latched while magic glides
Sage on the earth and sky;
There shall be corals in your beds
There shall be serpents in your tides,
Till all our sea-faiths die.
1.5k
Blueberry picking was no chore.
In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries. On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton
Of any other fruit!)
Toiling, till the sky would peek
And spill its hue. Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even
Box Turtles knew. How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked! And muggy from the heat of cool
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all
The things that were worth
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,
Easy, and rapt
In blue.
Nov 24, 2013
Nov 24, 2013 at 4:00 PM UTC
Blueberry picking was no chore.
In the hoary-head of blue things,
Stuff was easy, and ripe for the picking,
Bunching blue-baubles in baskets over-ripened
Of berries. On special mornings, due southwest
In lazy hills, round my home, — bells
Were breaking, in quiet sections of the Canton,
Massachusetts woods, and playing by them,
We rounded blue notes, some friends and I,
Plucked-out tunes to the breeze, on leafy-
Instruments, and pulled our weight, into moil-moisted
Bushels, (one batch of blue was more than a ton
Of any other fruit!)
Toiling, till the sky would peek
And spill its hue. Foragers were we, as teaming
Minnows round a polk-a-dot reef, feasting on some great
Blue-Fin’s roe, brave savages, painted in the glow of ember-
Light, of burnished yellows, and bushy-blanched browns
Drenched by dew and dappled in the stipple
Of sun-brushed fire, all the colours making patterns, even
Box Turtles knew. How merry it was we made our labors,
Why it was wicked! And muggy from the heat of cool
Indigo stars, we squenched our thirst, in glugs
Of kisses, each following the greatest by far,
And one soft day, we did notice the crown
Of a Princess, set on top of each full
Noble-blooded faery-pearl dropped
As if to commemorate all
The things that were worth
Knowing, stuff that was ripe,
Easy, and rapt
In blue.
Sep 9, 2012
Sep 9, 2012 at 12:09 PM UTC
She loves it
when we go fishing,
enjoys all of the activities,
spearing & angling,
gathering & netting,
anything to get
down on the shore.
Her boy in the boat
always bounces,
craves more of my dangling.
She's a looker,
baits my hook just right,
I don't fight her
& it ain't no shrimp.
Nooooo,
no wimp here,
I always use my big long pole
looking for her sweet fishing-hole.
When I finally get there,
find the right spot,
I scrape her scales
from every conceivable angle
to uncover her tasty pearl.
I give her a whirl,
shuck the shell out of her
as she squeezes me hard
with her tight mussel,
ready to receive my roe,
a splish,
a splash,
a huge shot
of my hot cocktail sauce,
curling her toes.
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 10:13 PM UTC