"satchels" poems
For years, they stole and robbed from our pockets.
For years, they murdered what faith we had,
Killed what hope we gained for ourselves.
Poverty loomed over us like death, the
Loss of materialistic payment. Currency controls;
We have none.
Beginning with a silly addition to parchment and paper.
A "stamp act," if you will. Oh, the rarity of a few extra
Coins to spend on a cake for the mistress!
Rebellion and violence against the act increased,
The Sons, the ones of Liberty left
Blood splattered on the ground we walk on.
Fear installed in the hearts of agents,
Collecting and shivering as coins ring in their satchels.
Soon, though, they left. Resigned and replaced themselves with
Another thief.
The Townshend- adding cents more to imported,
Provided, goods. The people starved for things
They need and can not afford.
Naive. They had materials. They had the skill,
But no need to use what they contained in their minds
And their bodies.
Begin the new world! Spin your own yarn and twine!
Build your own shoes! You don't need the goods
From old English factories and makers.
The disagreements and retaliation, the lack in
Morality in the brainwashed heads of soldiers.
A bothered redcoat drew his gun, leaving holes,
Horrible voids.
The dive from cliff to cliff, swing from tree to tree,
The ****** of blood and
The determination to be freed from the grasp of
A controlling monarchy.
The greed they exhibit and the cruelty.
Revenge for taking what is ours?
Sweet tea, English tea,
Soaked in the harbor. The tax will be no more!
The need for peace, rejected by one
Who wanted control and a steady reign.
The isolation, suffocation of the new land like an
Abused child.
It was only a matter of time before the child ran away.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 11:23 AM UTC
Where I grew up
We didn't celebrate celebrity
And weren't slaves
to the cattle-drivers of the masses
Where I grew up,
We were just young
And free
We toiled on train-tracks
Inventing troubles requiring
A daring escape.
With our stick-strapped-satchels
We foolishly mocked the local bums
Jealous of their freedom.
Ignorant of their pain.
Imitation is the hallmark of love
And yes, we loved the bums
And we were thorough through it
Where I grew up
The incandescence of the late afternoon
And early morning suns
Drew in a vibrant orange
Cast as paint on pale walls
The apartment... and eventually... the house
Shone brighter for it;
Though it seemed to struggle less in a house
That was considerably more empty
Especially around the holidays.
Where I grew up
We were taught racial and radical equality
Exacted with extreme prejudice
At every pep rally and presumably PTA meeting.
And while neighboring towns held race riots
We were racing our bikes, well...
I do miss my rollerblades
Where I grew up
Every girl was pretty as a movie star
And chased the bad boys
Like in every story I'd ever heard
And those boys won by popularity and power of presence
Girls they never deserved
Where I grew up
In winter we built massive palaces
From the winter's teardrops that huddled together
For warmth after the plow
Where I grew up...
I grew up too soon.
A little more than a little at a time
And it became clear
I had to move.
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 5:59 PM UTC
Between the cool-quarried kitchen
and paint-faded south facing door
runs a windowless wall
sugar-papered with childhood dreams.
Memories of roughly folded gifts
squirreled in satchels,
crossed creases still intact;
curled corners fixed with shiny pins.
Luminescent paint heartens the darkness of a pitch grotto
anticipating a flicked switch
to illuminate dimmed histories
of abstract symbols, visionless figures and countless fingers.
The small pink fists that captured
Time's most precious pieces,
now live with vaguely painted hope
of sheering unsteady walls
in their uncertain world.
May 2, 2010
May 2, 2010 at 3:05 AM UTC
You’ve got the lighter bags
Satchels of shame you slung over your shoulder
Then walked on
Well I’m far behind with weights of a different kind
And a suitcase of sorrow
And a duffel of doubt
And I’ve lost the words I long to shout
My mouth moves slow and mad
I’ve lost the legs that ache for adventure
And the skip inside that I once had
So I slip myself into one long lag
One sad song, one harsh drag
A caterpillar cocoon’s bundle of doom
Wrapped in a heart soon to break BOOM
Then I’ll be fine cause I’ll be gone
And you’ll wipe your head with your sighing palm
But thank the constellations
For the biting revelation
We’re just one eroding equation
Of empty elation and pretty persuasion
And my bags of demons shall remain
Under my eyes in a dark blue stain
And your bags of troubles will still remain light
Tossed over your shoulder in the cool of the night
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 10:54 AM UTC
I sit along the sunny sea
The waves
… kiss my toes.
I close my eyes
I giggle
Picking petals from a rose.
The scent
… of salty breezes;
A buoy sounds it’s bell.
Seashells tumble…;
Brother plays…
Sherman takes the hill.
Nana and Poppy are flying
Kite-tails…
Dance towards the sun.
The gulls hover free
Over the sea…
And, the sandpipers are on the run.
The summer’s cottage;
The stony walls
The rose garden blooms near the sea;
Remnants sewn
... in little satchels;
..., sea-salt and rose, potpourri.
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 12:41 PM UTC
Stood lonesome beneath the old floodlight
Sweetest embrace, the Gods shone down
Forging great dramas in steel slabs
and returning home with a picture of Hollywood
I, sad-eyed fool, asked after you, and heard nothing
Though, in Benzedrine dreams I was gifted your scent
and awoke to the stench of ********** ***** and the powder dissolved
Ah, I have heard your voice
Yet you ignore mine
The great whale twisted in the alley, with biceps bulging
and tussling with hoodlums we were sent packing,
Awaiting us were the sterile walls of some grande hospital
Lined with officers, their pads and pens at the ready
Beds spinning, squinting under neon, docile
and confused
Bars and bars, from one t' other, flicking roaches into the gutter as we went
and howling at the harlots stood 'neath street lights, flickering
Poisoned in body, poisoned in mind, the spirit on it's way
Brick lanes and paddy wagons, urchins and knock-a-door run
The unshaven dealers, passing poor product to the children
and they, still in uniform, bleary eyed, satchels and sandwiches
We, tied, cuffed, stranded and free
Flags! The flags were a sight, satirical and stupefying
Patriotism always made me chuckle, it being so absurd
Yet her majesty still reigns supreme, have we no shame?
Oh justifiable mockery, tainted our streets, the names we know
How can one free one's country if one is but one person,
and how could one simultaneous be one million?
But even here in this mournful cell that layeth ten feet below, I am free, I may not know it yet, but I am...
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 6:37 PM UTC
I never thought I’d be one of those people
the ones who sit in coffee shop's on Bay
readied note pads in hand, sitting with engraved pens
bought by mothers with high expectations
of their child drawing out the new future
But here we sit, a collective sum
drawing out pathetic fallacy’s
peoples right arms
someone else's future in poetic prose
finding details in the blur
of business men rushing past
so green is a theme in these woods
Grande Decaf 2 Sugars 2 Milk
and a shot of espresso
I stayed up late finishing a politics paper
What’s keeping you up “Todd of TD Bank”
Your extravagant 2 bdrm 2.5 bth on Bloor?
Or the realization your wife cheated on you
with a younger college drop out
i don't actually care Todd
i just want to write a new **** poem
Satchels hang from wooden chairs made by moroccans who get paid bottom dollar
I sit drinking over the sweat of latin americans picking coffee beans in a summer heatwave
the music plays to mask the confusion i feel here
displaced
my sperrys muddy and unkept
i am a large flaw in this small system
i'll keep my pen gliding
finding the answers to my questions
hoping when my words meet they shake hands in agreement
they are thoughts but not entirely
thoughts are questions short lived
and often unanswered
it turns out theres no answers in my silver pen either
engraved with an edgar allen poe quote
to a poem my mom never bothered to read
she wants me to draw a future
yet doubts me in every step to achieving one
Nov 27, 2015
Nov 27, 2015 at 12:20 AM UTC
As men, we respond. With sticks, in garments wet with black anthologies of life
Which whistles out of us as thorns, and sticky eyes that point that way. Exact hours.
Despite lust, from what has taken us before- to that androgynous triumph that brings
Us tears as we undo our buttons. That rakes time over our backs with the needles of small
Trumpets the teeth of ghosts, blood on the stems, awarded to brass ballerinas dancing on
Wounds each quotient inside our breaths, terrified strips the branches from the everywhereness
In front of what we can't see. Or open our eyes. Or follow our hands. The legs that we used to know.
The pallid girl I called home, dusty eyelids with energies sharpened with the sweet water and gold Threads atop a haystack I burned in pyres of all the yesterdays.
Once I was human, but not for my breaths or my volume or my sullied attitudes. Not for the denature of
My rotten mood, or the noxious smells from some evil words, or noisome meat, or grueling and expired
Thoughts. Unrolled canvases cauterized with the silks shreds in a suitcase beyond. A caption unread Intwined at the bow of her hip, or the hems that dotted her skin. Black and blue staled songs a father Sung so long ago. The hill rolled on as our bodies clung to satchels we hid, each watery step we steeped In the mud, culms fell and I didn't think, I haven't thought; everything I forgot approaches the tines of my Nose once aching thews overcame the moors I'd undone, there acarpous hues were pried into me.
Everything I've seen, is a muse that disperses my lungs.
Is the incantation of the thoughts I don't spake. Intwined in the fingers I shook, at the people that I
Wanted to hate, I am steal the weight of their steps. This urgency, penury hides. The silt hasn't moved
From the cenacle place. While cloffined the ashes stuck to my face. An eroteme I still uphold
As if this rock inside of my chest, only wanes when I lay on her breast.
Nov 18, 2013
Nov 18, 2013 at 10:40 PM UTC
Consider it defunct,
Like a shuttered window,
Like a witless drunk.
Consider it done and said,
Like a water-logged book,
Like the service for the dead.
Consider it forgotten
Like packets of love letters,
In satchels that are rotten.
Consider it old news,
Like old somethings for a wedding,
Something blue, that you would choose.
Consider it's really over,
Like a badly mangled body
Finally covered by green clover.
Sep 4, 2010
Sep 4, 2010 at 7:06 PM UTC
she lives in a crystal ball of paradise.
at the windows flowers of any and every kind sell themselves to you
it's a rainforest in a china tea cup on a chipped saucer
it's a conservatory in north east England
for 10 years we've watched each other's lives
for a while I was small enough for it to be a jungle, somewhere I could get lost in
small enough to believe that tigers didn't live in the outside world
but then gradually it just became a constant.
something in my life that stayed the same
and kept the monsters in
entangled in the plants, ivy crept up the legs of a chair.
hugging it into the floor such that it too seemed to grow from roots
roots which after so long I stopped tripping over and became a part of.
next to the chair, fragmented through leaves, bits of a table sat
and within that, books, books , books
this well-read vegetation read me
as I walked past every day and stared
as I changed my routes and grew 2 feet taller
as I let others tread my path too, let them get my compost in their shoes
and I loved this paradise for not a single thing died or wilted in all of that time
and as I walked home carrying satchels of heavier problems I saw this chunk of rainforest and felt safe, somehow
it sits on the end of a long street 5 minutes away from my front door.
in it sits a woman who every day for 10 years waves at me but never speaks.
not to me or anyone it seems
she does not know me
I do not know her and yet she waves, and I wave
and it saves me.
and I wonder when it started and if she knows how important it is to me
or if I started it or she
or if her only purpose is to wave
or if she even likes flowers
or if she is real
or if we will ever speak.
I have no answers but one.
We will never speak.
a cold day, too cold for October, too damp for mild, milky, smokey October
I pass a lamp post not too far away and I see it's peak
The conservatory peak and I think ahead and I feel scared
for today I am not lost in my problems
I am broken by them and think of anything else
I think of the woman and of who she is and what she did and I resolve to wave first
and I do
and for the first time in 10 years there is no one to wave back.
but the flowers
and even they look wilted
I still wave to the marvellous woman who may or may not be there
I can't see her but then
i don't know I ever did
her paradise is still there though the flowers are pastels
and I wave
and still, in that glass paradise, nothing wilts or dies
Dec 23, 2014
Dec 23, 2014 at 2:21 PM UTC
Still Gabriella swears by the colour red,
Torn sashes of yesterday can only consume
the mindset of her forgotten azure,
as the neck of dawn sneaks accidentally,
Yellow's parody the greater shame,
no school or satchels of mouldy black,
behind the lumme
she needed more time,
like a fulcrum balancing taciturn's turn.
Feb 2, 2013
Feb 2, 2013 at 6:35 PM UTC
Younger now--
Winking-wards-back-
-Never feeding satchels
With broken thumbs.
Slightly sniffing-
Sorrows in--
Decrepit hand-bags,
The silence is short.
And supposing day-beings
Are breaking evenings,
For nights that always come.
We know attics; see-how
Detached I am.
That boldness of single
Salmon-sand.
Aug 21, 2015
Aug 21, 2015 at 8:42 PM UTC
lungfish wallow in the sand
wait for the willowy fertile crescent
to change its course
snakes by a pyramid’s sphinx
there lotus grow papyrus scrolls
where stands a hippo
crocodiles are grim-eyed satchels
denial is not for you and I though
Aug 25, 2019
Aug 25, 2019 at 5:34 PM UTC
Like the four horsemen
They're walking two abreast
In brown with clipboards;
Bulging satchels hang by their sides,
With brochures and pamphlets
For me, who looks down from my window,
To ponder when they leave.
The crowd on the hill is talking,
Gathering, nothing's still.
All ages, colors and creeds,
Smiling, grasping, awaiting his will.
It looks like earth they're offering,
Year after year the same.
Casting nets, these fishermen,
Fishermen beget.
They're card said they were sad to miss me.
They take it from the young and old,
The ill and hale, and all between.
They are the cream between the wafers,
These Guides and their cookies.
Mar 21, 2017
Mar 21, 2017 at 10:10 AM UTC
our utility costs are getting
well out of hand
to pay for them you need
more than a grand
last week my electricity bill
came in the mail
and the amount on it
near made my heart fail
never do we get any respite
from the ever risings bills
they're hitting us in the pocket
with few happy thrills
utility accounts frighten
consumers everywhere
wallets and satchels
are feeling the despair
soon we'll be going back
to the days of candles and lamps
as they are more cost effective
for us to use in our camps
modern day living
is so outrageously dear
the dollars we're forking out
fill our limited finances with much fear
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 4:52 PM UTC
i wish there were more ways to say that i found an oasis in the form of your touch
i wish i could count the pains that i carry like satchels everyday
strung off my shoulders
i wish i knew why i refused to let them fall
i wish gravity would just have its way with me
toss me aside and find a new giddy little thing to run this so called world
i wish i knew how to tell you that i want to be a bird
not because they can fly away from here
not because they grace their homes with bright colored feathers i could never adorn
but because they are hollow
they are hollowed out, weak, frail and somehow it makes them stronger
or perhaps i wish not to be hollow
but to filled with something other than you
Mar 24, 2019
Mar 24, 2019 at 7:26 PM UTC
our utility costs are getting
well out of hand
to pay for them you need
more than a grand
last week my electricity bill
came in the mail
the amount stated on it
near made my heart fail
never do we get any respite
from the ever rising bills
they're hitting us in the pocket
with few happy thrills
utility accounts frighten
consumers everywhere
wallets and satchels
are feeling the despair
soon we'll be going back
to the days of candles and lamps
as they are more cost efficient
for us to use around our camps
modern day living is
so outrageously dear
the dollars we're forking out
fill our visa cards with much fear
Apr 28, 2014
Apr 28, 2014 at 10:59 PM UTC
My satchels are mismatched
Its deer doesn't laugh
No pencil sharpener ever
کیف های مدرسه ام لنگه به لنگه اند
گوزن اش نمی خندد
هیچوقت تراش نداشت
Jan 27, 2017
Jan 27, 2017 at 9:57 AM UTC
Color’s dervish, wanton rays
bark big waves out to little eyes -
surmise that they could live so bright,
or cut their burden down in middle flight
with Pantone Answer. Limber fantasies
hung dainty on the wire, we blast
a spectrum: chilling op-eds,
townless crier making hay
from sunny days’ hot take.
Alarm us! Twist like windy satchels
full of Great Divide
between the Haves and Left-Behind.
And as the bank vanishes wage,
we colors come of age
in numbers borne to rap
the sounding toll upon its steady head
and leave for dead his monuments
to Avarice, Big Dollar pulled in tow -
it’s too much meat, you know.
Too sufferful for show
when corny love could fit the bill:
high-mounting, climbing still.
Arrest the cold diversions from
your living-time and feel the sun
whenever possible; the harbingers
of war will tremble color-ward
and drop the gun.
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 2:37 PM UTC