"rutted" poems
God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid
In the same way
He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.
But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door
To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot
For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling
In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,
Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies
Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk
Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must
Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,
Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat
By a grisly-bristled
Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow's heat.
But our farmer whistled,
Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled
Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape
A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent
Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent.
6.5k
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Infinity's Mirror by Nat Lipstadt
Two mirrors, set in opposition observe created notional blending,
a reflecting pool of bonding's of unglued, contrary compositions.
Mirror to mirror, his imagery, fuses to Sylvia's images, hers,
faintly recollected, now living face, face to face, with his past insurrections, alters his future visions.
From cold water lake she's drawn, impaled by refracting regrets,
retrieved, drawing her words upon him, an awakening slap to drink,
beloved, tragic magic, infinitely captive. But this old man's tiddlywinks, land-locked words, blunted instruments, needy for release & salvation, are neither silvered or exacting, just stains on a dulled, tarnished brass spittoon, except for the brunt'd bunting of lines across his roughened terrain'd face, black and white, pen and ink etched illustration of howling agitation.
His words worn down, hardened, red faced, purloined speckled pellets, damp to roll on down her rutted, almost ancient, tear streak paths, disbelieved superstitions, sacrificed for one of her living morsels of words.
Man, here to her, pledges allegiance, audaciously defiling her poetic sanctity, a visage endless repeated, delivers her shiny poem-poised countenance, even though no forgiveness from time can a mirror afford for either, from her words, confession born, terrible truths beyond, beyond the finite.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 4:17 PM UTC
*je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)
Have not chatted in awhile,
me rutted in NYC,
a city of constant tear down
and sometimes flashy urban human
renewal...
While you,
you getting on with life,
growing up, growing down,
buying clothes for a new school season,
or growing children,
or boxing up now grandchildren memories of memories...
falling in love, writing poetry all about it...
You,
in Nepal, Malaysia, India,
Seattle, Portland, and the Florida's panhandle,
the US Midwest sainted hinterlands,
the South, that makes one love water,
water that has travelled from the faraway,
island continent of professorial Australia,
Did I forget the Philippines?
worse sin committed,
is that in
your poetry
I have not toe dipped,
quite the long erstwhile,
after loving it with
obsession devotion...
so just a Saturday afternoon
note penned just to you
and you alone...
je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)
So by way of apology,
craft a poem for you exclusive,
more than each word, letter,
every syllable, tongue tasted
for conjuctivity,
breadth and thus discovered
notes of red soil, raspberry, lemon,
even a hint of sweet masquerading as a
salty kindness in our veins,
our unique vintage of connectivity
Your hand to my lips raised,
grasped twice, by mine both,
slow lifting with stature, affection and respect,
kiss it and whisper just enough for
we two to hear...
je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)
even this seems weakly insufficient,
but care taken nowadays,
a new economy of words,
write less, think more, and
give up the truly deserved words only
as a mark of my fondness and respect
these come on no schedule,
often months in the making,
so forgive-me-not my unsweetened silences,
accept them with easy knowing that
je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)
the summer man wintered in discontent,
his journey now disrupted by forces exogenous,
stealing his vision, jailing him in between
walls of indecision, knocking down
his own twin towers,
but carelessly not making provision
to tell you well and often enough
je pense bien à toi
(i think well of you)*
Sept. 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 3:10 PM UTC
Tall prairie grass, wind-swept and
burnished gold, whispers with the
long-dead voices of all who passed
on this trail in their dream voyage
to Oregon, or California, or who
died, disease-ridden, exhausted, to be
buried just off the rutted trail
under a lonely stretch of sod
or cairned atop a barren lava bed.
A bone-white wagon tongue,
its carriage long ago disintegrated
and fallen into splintery planks,
laps thirstily at the dry sod along the
edge of the trail, finding only
parched earth and no water, burrs
and beetles instead of hydration.
More prairie than desert but still
more a place to leave behind, only
insects, lizards, hawks and the curious
chickadees seem to make it home,
this dusty stretch of history.
Hawks hover, then spiral effortless
high above, as they did so many years
ago, dark against a soft patchwork
of azure blue sky and creeping clouds.
The occasional click of grasshoppers
is barely audible in the billowing prairie
grass shaken by the incessant wind.
Dry bones of beasts and luckless humans
hug the edges of the trail, mute testimony
to the brutality of the westward rush
and the following of the Oregon Trail.
--
Nov 26, 2011
Nov 26, 2011 at 7:30 PM UTC
Poem
I watched a truck churning under a wire convergence
and the sky above doped entrails coming from Europe
Where had the turtle gone, the one puffed in the curve of the fox?
Now clambering onto the icy porch
I open the door into
smells of brass polish, wood polish
pots full of bones.
Winter’s wind rattling time holds me in
I must make marmalade with Seville oranges
with their thick rutted craters, sadly moon-like
a little sweetness of the blossom
worn on bridal veils will come back
as the flesh boils soggy with pips
and Demerara’s sweetness pummels
and I’ll be beaming ear to ear, beaming, full
of a sugar high, then fall. I don’t think I’ll be flying
to Jamaica, but at least I have a box of jars
My house will be dressed
of stiff forsythia branches, blooming
while I pull on stupoods of wool
socks, and wax my boards
I watched whirling snow collapse, loshing
on my face, signs of a dream, unsettling
separating mills and boon from reality.
If I had cast a spell stirring boiling sugar
And whispered ancient simple words
And as spring soars from
the dirt he would say agapa me
and my house full of worms, fat as fingers would dissolve
which is why I must plant, for butterflies to flutter
O my mighty easel, you are not like nature
though you are like a highway
of roots, clamped with straps
Supported or shaded, you reveal
all that I am.
The light begins to drop out of ticking stars
onto the snow bank behind the studio
the place where crimson and ochre mate.
I am really a painter
and my brushes are words
which glaze accidentally across
vellum, spurning censure.
Feb 15, 2012
Feb 15, 2012 at 6:02 AM UTC
beluga whales surfaced, floating ghostly white
ferocious tides ripped, sands sinking
cowslip tripped the cloud's crashing sky
sunbursts cracked storm walls, with fire yellow light
rain far-off sheeted, poured - hillsides weeping
fireweed bowed, bent heavily sleeping
the rutted road curved swerving narrowly upward
leading me to the sweet summer of Girdwood
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 9:35 PM UTC
I hear the piano playing softly
pulling me from these rutted plains
into a moist green meadow
a vision of a flowing brook down the hill
makes me believe the words of the Prophet:
“Your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”
yes, I am old, but I see and feel the rising gentle treble notes
lighten my leaded limbs
awaken my spirit
and ****** me into the realms.
It is the touch and glide of the pianist’s fingers
across the ivory skin of the keys
that transports me
in the waning hours of this day.
How sweet it is!
Sep 6, 2020
Sep 6, 2020 at 12:08 AM UTC
Poem
I watched a truck churning under a wire convergence
and the sky above doped entrails coming from Europe
Where had the turtle gone, the one puffed in the curve of the fox?
Now clambering onto the icy porch
I open the door into
smells of brass polish, wood polish
pots full of bones.
Winter’s wind rattling time holds me in
I must make marmalade with Seville oranges
with their thick rutted craters, sadly moon-like
a little sweetness of the blossom
worn on bridal veils will come back
as the flesh boils soggy with pips
and Demerara’s sweetness pummels
and I’ll be beaming ear to ear, beaming, full
of a sugar high, then fall. I don’t think I’ll be flying
to Jamaica, but at least I have a box of jars
My house will be dressed
of stiff forsythia branches, blooming
while I pull on stupoods of wool
socks, and wax my boards
I watched whirling snow collapse, loshing
on my face, signs of a dream, unsettling
separating mills and boon from reality.
If I had cast a spell stirring boiling sugar
And whispered ancient simple words
And as spring soars from
the dirt he would say agapa me
and my house full of worms, fat as fingers would dissolve
which is why I must plant, for butterflies to flutter
O my mighty easel, you are not like nature
though you are like a highway
of roots, clamped with straps
Supported or shaded, you reveal
all that I am.
The light begins to drop out of ticking stars
onto the snow bank behind the studio
the place where crimson and ochre mate.
I am really a painter
and my brushes are words
which glaze accidentally across
vellum, spurning censure.
Feb 15, 2012
Feb 15, 2012 at 6:02 AM UTC
Her prairie hair is grass gone to seed,
her voice vibrates on a fiddle string.
She taught you the meaning of homeward,
Americana Pollyanna, you tangle her name
in the cold northeastern stars.
She spills tall tales across the porch,
the air smells of thunder and cherry pie.
As a child she caught fireflies in jars
and has a scar in the shape of Alabama,
Pollyanna.
Tonight,
snow clouds roll through Chicago, the air is thin.
You stand in the window on a two hour layover
and look Homeward.
Pollyanna Mystica, a sky full of constellations
that you have already begun to forget:
watermelon seeds spit from the porch,
a spattering of insects on the windshield,
beautifully and infinitely random.
Freckles that trail down her knees and bare feet,
meandering paths you have followed before.
Pollyanna Diana, an fat moon smiles down on
the Kentucky dirt, rutted and red
where she will lay down her tired bones.
May 29, 2012
May 29, 2012 at 12:58 PM UTC
"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?" -- Browning.
"Shelley? Oh, yes, I saw him often then,"
The old man said. A dry smile creased his face
With many wrinkles. "That's a great poem, now!
That one of Browning's! Shelley? Shelley plain?
The time that I remember best is this --
A thin mire crept along the rutted ways,
And all the trees were harried by cold rain
That drove a moment fiercely and then ceased,
Falling so slow it hung like a grey mist
Over the school. The walks were like blurred glass.
The buildings reeked with vapor, black and harsh
Against the deepening darkness of the sky;
And each lamp was a hazy yellow moon,
Filling the space about with golden motes,
And making all things larger than they were.
One yellow halo hung above a door,
That gave on a black passage. Round about
Struggled a howling crowd of boys, pell-mell,
Pushing and jostling like a stormy sea,
With shouting faces, turned a pasty white
By the strange light, for foam. They all had clods,
Or slimy ***** of mud. A few gripped stones.
And there, his back against the battered door,
His pile of books scattered about his feet,
Stood Shelley while two others held him fast,
And the clods beat upon him. 'Shelley! Shelley!'
The high shouts rang through all the corridors,
'Shelley! Mad Shelley! Come along and help!'
And all the crowd dug madly at the earth,
Scratching and clawing at the streaming mud,
And fouled each other and themselves. And still
Shelley stood up. His eyes were like a flame
Set in some white, still room; for all his face
Was white, a whiteness like no human color,
But white and dreadful as consuming fire.
His hands shook now and then, like slender cords
Which bear too heavy weights. He did not speak.
So I saw Shelley plain."
"And you?" I said.
"I? I threw straighter than the most of them,
And had firm clods. I hit him -- well, at least
Thrice in the face. He made good sport that night."
1.7k
the wine
the words
the screaming torrents
all
groove cutters
some sharp
unripened, immature,
but drag marks made
because they,
rain rutted, sun baked
features permanent,
landscape of and on
parent child
the one
the same
some seasoned
accident chanced to breathe,
some ingenuous clever,
fully formed,
immature only
in the
youthfulness of the pain
for a lifetime
always on the tip of tongue
lingering
the child struck the parent
seventeen stitches on the head
the parent struck the child,
pleading mocking begging
his life to take
charge
neither pressed
charges
for
the wine
the words
the screaming torrents
all
grooves cut
had charged them
both
had changed them
both
thirty years plus
of immaturity,
testimony,
their sentences
are being served concurrently
nothing has changed
only the depth of the grooves
Nov 8, 2014
Nov 8, 2014 at 2:49 PM UTC
On a twisting, winding, rutted track
That weaved from under the pines,
A figure came in a burlap sack
Where the crossroad intertwines,
I could only see the bleeding feet
As they peeped from under the sack,
And the hood hid every feature that
Would deem it a Jill or Jack.
There was purpose in that stolid walk,
And determination fixed,
I thought to offer a helping hand
But my feelings there were mixed,
There were leaves and twigs on the figure’s back
And a slime that looked like mud,
I thought that it might have been attacked
When I saw that the slime was blood.
Nothing could stop its slow advance
As it plodded into the street,
I reached on out but it just walked by
So I thought I’d be discreet,
The day was settling into dusk
As it reached the village square,
And just as the ancient gas lamps lit
It gave a cry of despair.
The cry was that of a woman lost,
Was more of a hell-fire screech,
It echoed up to the steepletop
And I thought of Caroline Beech,
The girl who’d gone to the woods one day
For a picnic of pies and mince,
The basket lay for a week and a day,
She hasn’t been heard of since.
The figure stopped and its arm flew out
To point at the Baker’s door,
I saw his face at the window lace
As pale as a painted *****
The sweat stood out on his beady brow
As he hurried from room to room,
Locking each door and window now,
And shivering there in the gloom.
A crowd was gathering in the square
Surrounding the baker’s house,
‘You’d better come out and show yourself!’
But he was quiet as a mouse.
The men of the village burst right in
And they ****** him down on his knees,
She put one ****** foot on his head
And he squealed, ‘God help me… Please!’
‘I only wanted some love,’ he said,
‘But you just pushed me away,
I’d never have hurt a hair of your head
If you’d loved me once that day.’
And that was enough for the surly crowd
Who called on Oliver Beech,
To bring a rope from the stableyard
For a lesson they had to teach.
Her father fastened the rope around
The cringing baker’s neck,
Just as the daughter’s burlap sack
Collapsed to a heap on the deck.
There was nothing inside the hood or sack
As it lay there on the street,
Only the footmark stains of blood
From the murdered woman’s feet.
They dragged him down to the wood of pines
And he showed them where she lay,
Under a pile of autumn leaves
He’d covered her with that day,
They left him hanging above the spot
As they bore her gently home,
Now there is no baker in Warley Copse
So the villagers bake their own.
David Lewis Paget
Nov 19, 2013
Nov 19, 2013 at 4:15 AM UTC
*confident on timeworn routes
until unknown brings gasping fear*
what is this ?
*my playground now to be reduced
to rutted paths of paltry use ?*
enough !
power mine I have denied
creative pulses flattened
miming patterns drawn by others
spark of mine allowed to smother
shocked I recognize within
dryly spreading stubbornness
***the false vitality
of habit***
Mar 16, 2013
Mar 16, 2013 at 10:31 PM UTC
A peg of person
Hanging on my word
Show'd itself to me
Wooden, carved roughly
Surfaced on linen, varnish
Shallowed man.
He felt nothing to me, at me
He told me riddle body *****
I ignored, bored hated words of worry
But felt them myself, little
Anti-anti-anticipations
And trembling lumps of merryweather met us
But we came to a pond, and drank the green green wealth
We spun a little, splashed like ripples do
Onto a blank canvas of a conversation
Muddy murky words came out
'Sex *** sex' little bee, buzz for pollen, buzz for me
I couldn't. I'm not.
I'm not another, you're different, distinto
I'm feeling nothing, angsty man,
Through rides and fairgrounds together
I found a lost child, and he set me
I told you who I am and I found me.
Roughly cut, varnished wooden man
Burned in envy, dusted away
I felt nothing, watched his anguish
And figured, hammered, rutted out
A sense of self-belonging,
I guess we don't belong, I guess we make our own self-pity,
But at least we know.
I said goodbye, he did not, I left the day before yesterday
I wrote a confusing poem to figure it out
And people read it
Quietly I confined myself to words and Bibles written for me
For a bitter version of myself
I burned away, burned away,
Burned my, burned my burned away.
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 7:49 PM UTC
my feet
are numb in my boots,
I have holes in my soles, the
brown water to my ankles
but it will not freeze
filled with gun oil,
blood and drek
I am
not sure
when I slept last,
if I ever did
the others are there,
their eyes closed
some sleeping
some trying to sleep
some trying to awake,
though they will not
we
have yet
to throw their bodies
on the heap
all eyes
are closed in the trench
save mine, and the sergeant
who stands like a statue
more still than the dead
only his eyes move
back and forth
when
I am not looking at the wire,
the rutted field, and the ridge
where the Germans also sleep,
breathing the same foul stench,
I close my eyes, though I do not sleep,
but think of home, of Irina
I see her eyes, not the sergeant’s
and wonder if they have been closed
like mama’s and papa’s
and those beside me
I ask
the sergeant if tomorrow will be
the white flag, when we and the Germans
can retrieve the dead, from the wires,
where they hang, starved naked apes…
and when the flares fire the night sky
I see the reflection in their wide open eyes
like the glint of light on broken glass
I cannot
close their eyes
all is still
except for the swimming rats
and the pyres that send curling smoke
into the gray sky--neither the rodents
nor the fires utter a sound
the sun
is surely there, somewhere silently
making its arc in our pallid sky
but the last time I saw it
was two mornings ago,
or three, or two
when it rose,
I felt it on my face
through the caked mud,
and blood from Ivan,
who was shot through the neck
and fell on me, and I lay still
with him on top of me,
like a thick blanket
his warm life elixir
painting my helmet
and face red, him gasping softly,
though only a few seconds
until more rounds pocked his body,
a carcass by then,
but my salvation
would I be
the sodden sack of flesh
that covers another?
would the one who hides
under me remember my name?
and recall that I was
his salvation,
though I only a breathless
monkey, with holes in my boots
and a **** soiled uniform
would he
walk bent over
with the blessed cane of age
and remember, all I had done
for him, by simply dying?
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 4:17 PM UTC
Boardwalk beach goers
Strolled in ball caps
And in wide-brimmed hats
And in flip flops
And in cover-ups casually tied over low-slung bikinis
Lining the railing of the weathered pier
Eyes half closed, hands folded, heads atilt
Shoulders squared to a fading sun
A familiar form among the silhouettes
Twenty years hence
A cascade of raven hair
A billowing summer dress
My single breath
Then across rutted planks
To finally slake the thirst for another and
Be free of the malfeased heart
The lilt of perfume
Light, breathless, familiar
Transported back through time
To burn white hot again
Only to blanch at the precipice
Before the gray water
Silent
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 8:03 PM UTC
well she could sit around all day
and rot her poetry this way
just put it all rot down and say
"I've done my rotten duty"
done let the cat out of the bag
done with the hairball that old nag
all gutsy green this rotten queen
just rode a rotten beauty.
she'll change the word to what it's not
and that ain't wrong, but it ain't rot
and just like garbage turns to ***
and get's all down trodden
then long the rod, like rodeo
these words are ridden, time to go
so get the horse and don't be slow
you're right in time with ridin'!
We're ridin' errors then all day
poetic license paves the way
don't know quite where but that's okay,
cause it's our rot to ramble
and what this rutted road has got
is what the dusty novel's not
the long and short of every rot
is pure poetic bramble.
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 12:41 PM UTC
Sunbeams dancing off the ends of leaves and
dropping to laugh along the rutted path,
running up my legs and tickling my tum,
sunbeams are fun.
We all think so except for grumpy caterpillar who only ever complains about headaches and hemorrhoids and pains in the chest.
His Mum's a butterfly and doesn't know why he's like it, blames his Father, the red admiral, 'he was always at sea', so she says.
'I'll be a sunbeam for you', we sang and the woods rang with titters and the twitter of birds,
'just storybook words', Mother said, as she tucked us up in a flowerpot bed and the day will be bright again tomorrow and so we borrowed some sleep from the moonbeams that keep the sunbeams 'til morning comes courting.
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 2:39 PM UTC
When the sky is black with storms
There is a place for you with me,
When the sea is rough and cold
a haven, safe, to be.
When the road is long and rutted,
I’m a smooth tarred motorway
To ease you along the path
to where you long to stay
When the journey’s never ending
I’m the firelight from home
When the anger’s overwhelming
I’m the calm before the storm
When the wind is strongest
Uprooting all around
I’m the steadfast oak
Stolid, rooted, Sound.
When the rain is pelting
Soaking all around
I will be the shelter,
your spirit will not drown.
I know that you can’t see it,
But I’ll always have your back,
I’m here with you forever
to guard you from the flack.
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019 at 3:28 AM UTC
he dreams he is attending lively flirtatious party with many good-looking people there are also scary monsters with sharp teeth claws horns scaly rutted skin foul smells snapping tails he thinks it strange troubling asks what is going on fashionably dressed pretty female guest grins answers don’t worry monsters won’t hurt you they’re not for the most part dangerous everything is cool he sits in chair sips drink trying to feel relaxed but monsters keep pestering harassing one monster spills drink on his pants another monster bites his ear he cannot get away calls out for help but all the beautiful guests have disappeared party now crammed with scary monsters friendly monster explains people are actually imagined personifications belonging to each monster then all the monsters gather around cackling clapping dancing last thing he remembers as friendly monster holds up mirror to his face is another monster gurgling let you be you
Mar 11, 2010
Mar 11, 2010 at 5:59 PM UTC
Nobody opened the path out of darkness.
Scientists assembled - in a clean room in
New Mexico working tuition time -
a three-thousand megapixel sword
in the reflection of whose blade
we saw the bleeding comet
and, flipping the hilt in our hands,
saw it spark as it traversed the edge,
and from its position knew our place.
The universe instructed us to sing
and we refused. Instead we watched
its jaunty hand tick time away
and call for decrescendo.
We played with bombs.
If it all feels perilous, it is.
Watching the white face of the moon
for mushroom clouds
we rutted, and learned new recipes
and held out forks to one another saying
“taste”.
And when the fear has passed -
which it will
for the world is perpetual
because we live in it -
it will be locked untouchable in the past
where fear cannot go.
The fear instead will be:
of the million flavours we have made
and fed each other, is any a part of us still?
Dec 3, 2017
Dec 3, 2017 at 3:09 AM UTC
the wind stirs her from her sleep as it tap dances through the leaves,
and once again she finds herself with a hastily rolled joint on the front patio at two a.m.
maybe tonight she'll finally make sense of something.
cursed to the perpetual contemplation of theories she can't even pronounce,
her gaze is fixed to the lights of the night sky.
she want's so badly to join them.
a child sculpted of raw stardust can't rest due to obsessions involving her ancestry.
so the match is struck
and the dark loosens up
just long enough for her to remember she's still stuck to the ground;
it's enough to make any celestial being feel worthless.
but she's priceless...
she just doesn't know it yet.
sometimes she swears she can feel the force of the entire universe's sway
tugging on her heart strings,
pulling her in synch with the pulse of all of existence.
she often just dismisses it as vertigo and takes another hit.
she doesn't get it.
the stars burn in the static hum of limitless outreach and await the painstaking instant that they'll finally collide,
maybe even just scrape against one another...
it's lonely up there in outer space.
the planets space themselves strategically to avoid the tug of one another's gravity,
aiming to dodge the speeding bullet of affection and the promise of separation it inevitably brings.
but she's out there in saturn's rings adorning herself in comet's tails and waiting for a show...
stubbornly certain that she couldn't possibly be alone.
not forever, anyway.
she hopes.
telescopes lenses eventually shift,
distorting our self-made image of reality...
we can't place bets on much of anything, anymore.
there's so much to be left invisible,
and mystical,
and made up as we go.
we may be going nowhere,
but we hitch our ride in style.
pretty painted marbles spinning circles on rutted sidewalks dance in tune...
side stepping around a bright star at center stage.
she thinks of herself as just a flea in the wardrobe,
maybe things will stay simple that way.
the roach scorches fingertips,
and she hurls it toward the earth...
drawing her attention back to the ***** parking lot beneath her feet,
and the promise that sleep will bring something new to dream.
Nov 21, 2012
Nov 21, 2012 at 4:21 PM UTC
Today's the day my love and I,
sign our lives away.
From now we will always see,
each other every day.
This building that we stand in now,
so tall and grey and proud,
With its windows set high in the wall,
for all the watching crowd.
The man above will cast his gaze,
and witness our devotion.
Oh! Love's never-ending sigh,
what a wond'rous shining notion.
His blue eyes creased when I first asked him,
to be my only one.
Those eyes turned black with total fear,
the night we had to run.
First they blew his brains out,
onto the rutted road.
Then they carried me away,
a dumb and deafened load.
The day they tried me it was warm,
sunlight bounced around the city.
Guilty not for acts of love,
mere mistaken identity.
A Father came to save my soul,
for I am not so old.
But he spoke to me of burning,
When all I felt was cold.
So, the big man will have his say,
and pull upon his rope.
And everything will disappear,
save for the rope around my throat.
But me - I shall shed not a tear,
nor whimper nor cry out.
Because behind this hood I have,
a truth that I don't doubt.
Love for death or death for love,
or any which way 'round,
a breath for love's dead finest,
is held safely in the ground.
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 1:42 PM UTC
I saw him... Ripping the posters of hope to the ground
The bear stuffed. Cardboard box a home he never dreamt of
An abandoned minefield of metal gongs.....still clanging
With life encircled on its rim, clearly in full erosion
One eye had begun to fall, clinging on by a theatrical thread
A small hole had appeared, the left ear on hard times
He looked sad...his 'Bravo' days departed, kicked like an
Old tin can scattering nailed organs, strewn carelessly
The haphazards hurt the most; those that landed head first
They burrowed into the soft fur, grizzling through
Lack of gripe water to anaesthetise the first cut
Fur ***** were out of stock, cleaned right off the shelves
The posters painted with high definition, torn with sad
Hand shakes. Lined up ******* into fists, like used tissues
Their eye level aim skimmed the parcelled plots and slotted
Into basket cases, breathing in ***** dumpsters before their due date
Shrugging it off didn't work, shouldered earrings...stuck in rutted
Situ for too long. You came between them and the tombs of truth
Caused a nasty virus to accelerate. Baldness stole the soft
Funishings from your limbs in between the stuffing years
Mar 11, 2013
Mar 11, 2013 at 4:16 PM UTC
:
*Though sunny the days of cloudless expanse
in fields lowly rutted with fear
Down footprints of mud in a circular dance,
a garden now beckons my dear
A wood picket fence and a hedge overgrown
beyond an old gate bearing rust
That cringes and creaks near the wicked seeds sown
about northern winds once were ******
Vines cling an arbor in strangling grip,
creeping like worms neath your feet
Proud of their thorns and the flesh they do rip,
souring fruits ever sweet
Step into this realm where petals now bleed
with faces apart from the norm
On barbed wire stems of a nevermore need,
now cast of an unending storm
Awaits there child with a part in her hair
and roots tethered deep to the ground
A bouquet of pain offered up, if you dare,
in silence she speaks without sound
Come follow this path of a nightmarish dream,
where nothing that lives ever dies
But hold tight your tongue for she hates when you scream,
the girl with the blackberry eyes*
May 3, 2016
May 3, 2016 at 1:43 PM UTC