"scree" poems
fischers rap
on a hot tin roof
bristol creek pools
over rock and seed
english wolfhound (and the barkbuster)
stroll pine lane
vibrant colors
of a cool spring
in cob yellow and
forest green
field mice squander
in cotton wind
goats and ferret
hold seven hour trim
raven and ****
meddle and forage (on a splendid fiaker goulash!)
crickets and frogs
hidden
in swollen grey logs
creepers fill the
cut stone walls
coy wolf high
on a frayed white rope
eagles perched
at trudy’s bend
catamounts laze
on a snow base cedar
(pared arbutus bent
through a failed ground rock)
brush spider spins
a timely web
brown bears fumble
at the spirit jamboree
quizzical squirrels
crack their nuts
as pillow clouds float
over telegraph trail
12 point dances
on talus and scree
hen hawks float
in a big hard sun
clydesdale and coach
trot copper smith road
(glancing down
on finch and the warbler
whistling through
colander row)
lavender fills
the peat soil box
mountain cats
guard the heavenly gates
black eyed ridge
is wide and open
the country squire hails
this fruitful land
Mar 7, 2017
Mar 7, 2017 at 12:18 AM UTC
I will always remember
Swinging with you in the night
January through December
You were my safe place, my light
Little sister I always favored
Saving me from every scree
Always kind, and rarely untoward
Without you, I wouldn't be me
The simple sweet moments we have had
Laughing, talking, and crying too
In everything you were my comrade
Even my relationship guru
When little, you'd climb into my bed
And even now as we are grown
Though some pieces have been left unsaid
All silence between us is known
Lovely little sister
Inseparable friend
Through the sweet and bitter
You are here to the end
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 11:54 AM UTC
I sought satisfaction in stupid sheepishly and shallow strides.
Scared subconsciously, I swallow and sustain substance for pseudo self esteem strengthening.
I seemed of in service to slumber and stinging sadness, shots sank like ships, submerging into the sea of my swarthy stomach in seconds.
I somewhat sympathies as a sailor, sweating, struggling and swimming in slipping sobriety saturated in my sulking style.
Scanning swarms of serial swindlers, striking sculptures stances of self-doubt.
I stammer in a storm of slurs, ******* down my safety, stopping myself at the stoop of the saloon I see a seductive silhouette staging the space.
She stroke my sight, standing sanguine in scarlet, soul sold in high heels.
The smoothest sculptures in seven square miles were subjugated into scree and I was ****** in submission.
Stubborn staggering suitors, stand shaking silently as she is stopped by sharks stalking and snarling sycophantics.
So straightforward in suggesting their secret starvation to strip sensations, seem by seem, like a sub-par **** cinema scene.
They step and speak short.
She smokes off, stranding the scree in smoldering slaughter.
Its sad this soul-less sanctuary soaking up sorrows.
So self inflicting, and so satisfyingly side splitting.
She sported her spurned, scorned off into sadistic solitude and stained sticky stigma, sobbing to sleep.
So spent from simple stocked, stored and supported senescence of ceremonial subjection of ****** status.
I savior my sincerity, and stretched out of this strange stadium of stooges.
So long scarlet sanguine I sang softly, as she stole my sight suspiciously in sync with hers.
Sacrificial seconds split from smearing stolidity to sharing a smile.
That's simple satisfaction, so I seen scripted in sitcoms and shows.
Supporting sapiens in stasis to see sappy stunners on screen, to stare snoopy, as stabs and slashes strike socially into socialites of so called sanity and sovereignty.
To sweetly pay salvage as slaves of soppy studio slander.
Such is this sorry Saturday night, I am solidified in sedation.
Dec 14, 2017
Dec 14, 2017 at 12:00 PM UTC
*dandelion seeds
too tight to fly--
frozen Spring lovers
stream breeze--
pollen ripples into sun,
brace of current bed
inflorescent burst--
hikers' boots beside a pool
on sun-baked rocks
green buds ***** the air--
in corymb echoes,
fuzz of leaves
water-sounds cascade--
moss-drops, trickles; dog-splash, falls;
gurgles under foot
the tones of waves
tiny on the smooth shore
lipping on
stem-length stars,
streaming rays of sun
and water's deep shade
gentle eddies over stone--
one world,
one world
froth twirl and tendril
under Spring brook shade--
so clear beneath
burl-sprouts misted bright,
cups of water,
forest thirst
waterfall gasp--
the cold! the winter! now swim!
the first breaths
Spring Misogi--
pummeled muscles--
grin of mossy heart
your wet shirt against my chest
--hot love--
thunderous winter-melt
we sink laughing,
numb in Spring's fluids--
our voices drown
papaya lunch--
a tropic fruit
and i am home
sweaty backpack--
two beloved women hike,
my heart weightless
cliff-jumpers--
green from nostalgia,
i hit bottomless
cameras first,
avert canopy surprise--
Spring screen
black-backed iridesce--
warm beetle slips
in and out of scree
barefoot in the stream,
our hands and voices smooth--
ankle sprain
Spring paths--
a parent's visit
breathes new life
my womb-maker
from another life--
ageless comfort
her haiku eyes--
water shining sun green
bloom here again
*
\|/
Jun 23, 2013
Jun 23, 2013 at 11:06 AM UTC
The sunrise burns the sky
A carefully coloured explosion
Blooded light flooding the low Kent fields that lie
Before Maidstone, excreting soundless motion:
Yellow carnation shards sway
With this violent advent of day.
In Hucking Estate diaphanous bluebells nestle
Beneath the groping canopy
Of Ash. Oak; the encroaching stinging nettle
Shields the frequent woodland scree
Covering with a verdant flush
Brooks that through the stones invisibly rush.
Within the hour, the Gorgon-headed sun
Sweeps aside the cloud-
The red into blue and orange has run
And in Lower Fullingpits Wood the increasingly loud
Shuffling of badger attacking vole, fox strangling rabbit,
All compounded into daily habit.
The Kent Downs rise and fall
Like resurrected earth-bound music from a time
When hill, wood and pool
Emerged from unfettered chalk and lime.
Before the Cantii hunted in ancient Wents Wood,
For deer and boar, spurred not by hunger but for the love of blood.
Above the sparrow-hawk attacks the sparrows
Claw enmeshed in feather,
Beak unravelling neck. The unalterable sorrows
Of nature and weather.
Cruelty never ceases, but just gets more efficient-
Kindness remains deficient.
Jun 22, 2016
Jun 22, 2016 at 3:41 PM UTC
a dream was never held
within the heart like this;
to caress and mimic make
the metamorphic yields
no image to allure, on swell of
blissing ribcage breathing:
field-horizons seethe for
gaze to set upon a focus-fix,
a cough subsides to utter sweetness
in the air, the intake of a blanket joy
to sweep the skin entire me
for being free, electric nexus-winds
to soften stances, slowly vibrate
perspectival nodes, and deeper nests
of echoed intertwinement
through the hall of gathered newness
breathed, breathing insight
sounds beyond the worlds imagined--
to sing the choice in serpentine,
throat cascades galactic chirping
carved flight of nimble-cover quickening
shines higher, pitching lust and thought
behind my ears revealing awe
ambrosia waves from sigh-blown
relics of a leafy launching,
spinning dust of nebulaeic tones
on ancient sprout-soul holding
true for humble new beginnings green and blue.
heave this newfound beauty
axis wing upon that giant
spiral booming where
imagined whims are gentlest
of all transearthly greatnesses--
simply sphotal sounds
on winds of changing colorflow--
sending quivers in the dark,
a smile-fire scree of charms
i've known along
us even while alone
Jul 27, 2012
Jul 27, 2012 at 11:43 PM UTC
little purple flower
In a desert of scree
waits for a butterfly
(me, too)
May 18, 2021
May 18, 2021 at 6:14 PM UTC
Aspen, ponderosa pine, blue spruce
pink glacier-cut rock, scree, ravens
gray jay, peregrine falcon, hawk.
We climb to 11,000 feet in three days,
camp at Lawn Lake for three days. Alpine
tundra. Elk, bighorn sheep, marmot.
Tileston Meadows, ticks in grass,
rock face of Mummy Mountain.
Binoculars show pink cracks in gray rock.
Stoke gas stoves, play cards.
Boil water, set up tarps, lay out
sleeping bags, hang bear bag.
Watch crescent moon slice into
Fairchild Mountain. Moonlight
makes a mosque of the rocks.
Yellow aspen splash in dark green
spruce and pine. Gullies where streams
slash during spring snowmelt.
One rock, feather or flower worth
more than money. Need no wallet,
keys. Just clothes for fur.
All day climb toward saddle to see
what's on other side. One hawk floating
among bare peaks and over valleys.
Wind at 13,000 feet
turns to sleet. Turn back from peak,
take boulders two at a time down.
Winter moves into mountains.
Then we fly from Denver to New York
where it's still summer.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 1:04 PM UTC
placed a heart inside a box,
box, sealed with a zillion locks.
then she went down on one knee,
with eyes closed she couldn’t see.
on her shoulder laid a sword,
she recalled the ghost of fjord,
for her journey to begin,
need she open din within.
placed a feather on that knee,
dropped her bones into a scree,
cold air breeze stayed far behind,
as her soul with stars aligned.
her heart remained inside a box,
someone took of all the locks,
on a sword he dropped a tear,
filled his hunger with a fear.
no one else but ghost of fjords, welcomed her amongst the wards.
feather fell on blood sprayed scree,
begins the journey with the sea.
Jan 7, 2020
Jan 7, 2020 at 7:13 PM UTC
Across the blistered gibber plain where flies die in the sand
Through swamps of prickly sago where rotting death is planned,
To stride in windblown tussock hills where wind vanes carved their say
To saunter groves of green tree fern where moa giants did play.
In clearings cut with alkali, tusked elephant would loom
With crevassed hides, Methuselah, once aged in terms of doom.
Whilst high above the rocky crags of ancient mountain high,
The keening screech of kestral soaring up to deep blue sky.
Heavy boots in crusted sand where tiny lizards flee
Amidst the rust red rubble of volcanic rock and scree,
To clamber up the ignimbrite, great Vulcan's steps of stone,
Encrusted with thick epiphyte in lichen's mossy home.
Up into the altitude where dark cloud clusters here
And the threat of rolling thunder indicates that rain is near,
Torrential in it's downpour with sudden squall of gale
Surmounted, all quite suddenly, with a blinding blast of hail.
Staggering to shelter in a tiny alpine hut
To find hot coffee on the woodstove and a curvy, hot young ****
To find us frollicking together beneath a patterned patchwork quilt
Was quite beyond my imagination's comprehensions built?
And afterwards in slumber through the curtains of our room
I watched, in fascination, at a hanging, frozen moon
And wondered, in amazement, at the doings of the day
And speculated, sleepily, where tomorrow's prospects lay.
Blearily I stretch out from the covers, nicely warm
To nullify persistence of that alarm's intruding horn,
Yawning into morning I remove myself from bed
With panicked realisation....all dreams evacuate my head.
Vanished are the alpine hut, the dolly bird, the caves
The crash of rolling thunder and the plunge of mighty waves,
Gone are those phantoms which dwelt inside my mind
Devestatingly dismissed until re-dreamed another time.
M.
Pukehana Paradise
13 December 2014
Dec 13, 2014
Dec 13, 2014 at 10:09 PM UTC
Rising guano smokes the white birds.
The North winds homing, ave, a long
Besieging sea and ferries the prince
Of waves pass pacific and the fair isles.
With javelin eyes, aloft, blue streaks
The seething air, headlands draft
Grave embattlements, red rivulets
Paint on the raining wing, black art
Ticks the tern, marked minions and more
Dread. Once you were a foundling
Dropped from sovereign doons, scree
Of sky, air of wizard, your image late
Spikes from the lake, taut talons train,
Your breast a speckled main, rapier
Of dreams, arisen, sheathed in stone.
In the frosts of autumn, leaves do tell
In storied colours, yellow and red,
Round the shores your kingdoms table,
Battle cries break, a silence of wails,
Though they fall they shall burn again.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 11:52 AM UTC
After “lo fatal”
When I read you first I was living in Bergen.
Pretending at translation
and going up scree, clutching at conifers
in a painted flaxen sun.
I'd imagined you’d given up on being Modernista
to settle for a quaint shack—
for the hardness of the carved fjord.
Now if you were to arrive in the wild
where I have kept this place
strangely similar by the pine, blue herons,
Mount Ozzard over the dandelions,
how would you come walking down the road?
Would deer pause to smell your tracks
or the cedar cutter look up as he heard you pass,
or these coal-black snags
which guard the lot’s entrance
and haven't swayed in so long
groan?
Dichoso el árbol, que es apenas sensitivo.
Happy is the tree, you said. Scarcely sentient.
Ruben Dario: what is the tree
which rushes through this poem?
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 11:33 PM UTC
Rising guano smokes the white birds.
The North winds homing, ave, a long
Besieging sea and ferries the prince
Of waves pass pacific and the fair isles.
With javelin eyes, aloft, blue streaks
The seething air, headlands draft
Grave embattlements, red rivulets
Paint on the raining wing, black art
Ticks the tern, marked minions and more
Dread. Once you were a foundling
Dropped from sovereign doons, scree
Of sky, air of wizard, your image late
Spikes from the lake, taut talons train,
Your breast a speckled main, rapier
Of dreams, arisen, sheathed in stone.
In the frosts of autumn, leaves do tell
In storied colours, yellow and red,
Round the shores your kingdoms table,
Battle cries break, a silence of wails,
Though they fall they shall burn again.
Jul 18, 2012
Jul 18, 2012 at 2:16 PM UTC
One eye lined a rippling void in our favor
Two lights aimed to dither coherence astray
A spark may be one
A pyre, another
Two methods by which we may aptly narrate
These volumes which artifice rendered impassive
Some lifetimes ago
As if carved out of stone
Upon faces that masons could not replicate
We taxed ourselves harsh by indulging old spirits
But graver the crime was to give them a name
The deepest transgression of all, incorporeal
Our memories in the end gave us away
Yes, nostalgia seeps in through the gaps in our logic
To shepherd the currents beneath those blue waves
As if tides could be altered by such visitation
And oceans stood frozen with forces concealed by
Some gravities borne of celestial weight
Reluctant to wake and depart Colorado
My surrogate mother
Our canvas to paint
Expressions whipped dry by the skirt of her leather
And eardrums wrung pierced by the crags and the scree
If I leave now this portal may vanish forever
I could leave my sins here in the chill of the Springs
Release them down mineshaft chutes long since abandoned
In futile attempts to abscond the unclean
And rise to leave haunts of offenses unstated
To come crawling back from the dead
Southbound with me
Hold out, I was told
With arms to receive
You'll make sure to keep your hands steady for me
I'm soaked to the core with my soul and voice breaking
With eyes for your heart and its formless cascade
And my pail with dozens of holes to redeem
An abundance of squalls brewed behind both those seams
The light crosses your path
And you won't look away
When I question by which laws such mirrors are made
And it all seems so cruel that we're drawn here to suffer
To be teased and transfixed by what glimmers remain
I can drum up what strengths I have left to ignite you
I'll shout even louder when you forget your name
I'll relearn every way that I've known how to love you
But we're taught to process what we cannot maintain
Yes, our hearts are irreparably torn in this way
Sep 23, 2016
Sep 23, 2016 at 8:29 PM UTC
you hand'd me a handful,
you hand'd her a handful,
you retain'd your handful -
done by sight, something
rare to be a good omen.
eyes met collectively
as we contemplated.
dry musty taste, almost retch'd.
the sun shone bright, and
it was too late to turn back.
we giggled a bit at first, and
you found miss'd cap.
pop'd it. commenced vomiting.
your tryp never peak'd.
your chick laid on blue lounge chair
calling me over. commenting:
"it looks like ground beef, doesn't it?"
her finger pointing at
pile of ***** my stomach churning,
vision as well,
collapsed into chair in shade.
-- lapse in space,
it had come on too fast, too hard,
and i went to find more driftwood.
my fire had become sacred,
burning only the long dead.
the brined and dried.
i skid down scree hill on heels
to find snake on my path;
startled, it slid off -
no concern.
drift'd from initial plan to
explore an alter'd world,
saw spider and vomit'd.
cleansed.
and back to collecting my driftwood.
fire raging midday,
lounging in shad;
sun raging midday,
cruising out this end'd tryp;
wondering in constant if that
spider ever had his tryp.
Jan 14, 2013
Jan 14, 2013 at 1:20 PM UTC
Rising guano smokes the white birds.
The North winds homing, ave, a long
Besieging sea and ferries the prince
Of waves pass pacific and the fair isles.
With javelin eyes, aloft, blue streaks
The seething air, headlands draft
Grave embattlements, red rivulets
Paint on the raining wing, black art
Ticks the tern, marked minions and more
Dread. Once you were a foundling
Dropped from sovereign doons, scree
Of sky, air of wizard, your image late
Spikes from the lake, taut talons train,
Your breast a speckled main, rapier
Of dreams, arisen, sheathed in stone.
In the frosts of autumn, leaves do tell
In storied colours, yellow and red,
Round the shores your kingdoms table,
Battle cries break, a silence of wails,
Though they fall they shall burn again.
Jun 21, 2013
Jun 21, 2013 at 2:32 PM UTC
*I face the mountain;
Sharp and defined.
A tiny, uneven facade
skirting a perpetually
changing sky.
I grow envious
of its consistent demeanor;
Its' immutable character
in rain, hail or shine.
Now, closer to the summit,
I stumble on rockfall
and scree slopes.
I face the mountain,
Resolute and bold
in a final struggle
to assume its
soothing temperment.*
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 4:56 PM UTC
Auburn coated cattle
seek safe purchase
on a limestone scree
bent windscarred conifers
climb the hill
Aug 5, 2012
Aug 5, 2012 at 8:29 PM UTC
some of us are fortunate -
our shores are sandy beaches
occasionally blowing over
with an aching dust-
often meaningless, yet
bearable
clouds drift languidly
over them
as if they were a break from
the balmy days of
self reflection
but most of us
our shores are scattered with rocks,
scree and boulders
worn down by
the relentless whims of ocean borne
storms
hurricanes that feel entitled to destroy
everything that piques thier fancy
avalanches of ignorance
come tumbling
off the great, hulking,
blind land masses
these hulking shadows, these blunt winds
they are
so pervasive
very nearly
inescapable
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 9:28 PM UTC
the road gathers itself like a drained old woman,
hunched over rags, beneath the gloomy crag,
sintering as it nears the beach,
worn out through time, impoverished
it has become reflective in the chittering half-light.
Eviscerated by the pawing waves,
contradictory cracks like entrails, hanging out
crushed into solitude , it redefines its continuous retreat.
In the reductive shade
it circumvents the cove, its tarmac withered,
a battered host to foreign weeds.
Sunrise chides the posturing sky, the sulking universal remnants
vanishing in the fenestrated glare. In the near distance, air unravels,
the moving storm exhaling slips of cloud
rapidly swarming like furious flecks of phlegm-sneezed out in perpetuity
between heat and cold.
The road lies entombed beneath a scree, tumbledown stones and dust.
Ramblers and cars have sought and found
an alternative route. The moistened rubble creaks
as liquid gathers in its shifting heart, crawling out in rivulets-the rain
descending like spit,
emolliating the countryside, shifting dollops of fetid mud,
enveloping like a furious aneurysm.
Sea and land entrenched in conflict,
a war of attrition always won by seas, unleashing energy
of mindful apocalypse in the manner of a gentle sigh.
The gaping abscess of scarred promontories tottering
like feverish drunks. The mouthed obscenities of carnivorous
birds radiates throughout the cove pinpointing local
drownings encrusted with salt. Sea upon sea impose themselves
enviously on rampant shorelines feasting on sand and rock. Never ending!
Plunging ever forward like a barren plough, receding, only to
re-site its casual fury-implosion upon explosion.
The road in its sullen retreat
stumbles through narrow valleys speckled
with gloom; trees with yellow flowers
blooming in crinkled shadows,
deer leaping through high-standing grass, mincing
between tall thin trees. Loping down
into the cities, it becomes a tousled high street full
of immigrants, all yearning for the sea.
Jul 27, 2017
Jul 27, 2017 at 12:59 PM UTC
A dream of pitched skies.
My complexion illumined,
By nocturnal radiance of gloom,
Shined steel rays from the moon.
Creeping coastal winds on my right.
Frothing waves approaching my skin,
Sand constricting my flesh like pins,
Doomed to deep rapture, I could not win.
The shores of scorching Tripoli sands.
With Arabic fire potent of golden alchemy,
Above burning desert, under molten sea,
Lies Ottoman provinces, drowned at scree.
Were I to become a victim of Siren's call?
To sink without ship or a captain's crest,
Was a fleeting frig sailing to sea-change, lest
I collapse bellowing into Mother Earth's breast.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 8:28 PM UTC
I walk to the newsstand over
blue gray cobblestone jumping up
my soles, the windows of
every mother in Viterbo
looking at my swaying arms,
at the very reason I love
the squint of eyes in morning sun.
Because I am free from anticipating
a slow sinking earth, hung twined,
hung taut, hung thin, hung dried,
peeling off the body like
scree, relenting.
Because I am ten.
From five lire scrunched in a fist, from
a father’s request for Il Messaggero,
steps can brim with direction, with place,
with an appetence for growing
a grown man would lunge at.
Could make a mute anchorite sing again
to an unsacred sky: “a son is a son as
a song is a song, this is that I am
is why I belong.”
I walk to the newsstand
under glaring windows, under
the look of all Viterbo’s mothers,
under the sluice of morning sun
that piques the eyes as sliced brine,
and the stand is shuttered.
Dirt metal slats I touch once
to make sure, and then I walk
straight back, back with the sun now
behind, illuminating stone, in front of me.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 6:29 PM UTC
Cats stuck to window sills as languid as the rolling hills and craggy like the rocky tors
sheep sleeping underneath a portcullis of a sky
as steel grey clouds disguised as prison bars soothe
them gently with the Lakeland lullaby
I saw no Viking
but I did see hikers by the score
up the scree
scrambling up the tor
being me,
I wondered
what you doing that for?
Boats across the lake
too much
Kendal mint cake
and your jaws ache
take the Lilliputian train
we're toddlers
toddling off again
Such fun.
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 5:21 AM UTC
The beryl high land smoulders….
Where skinny manes of cloven trailing, cuff
the rake of jumbled scree,
a porous crux of timbered carol
matins from the mossy shrine
to urchin on the bluff and draft
in nooks of birch and bilberry.
On that high dais, Corvid tribals
potter on the reeks of gale.
Fell boatman of the troubled storeys
quarter in some sleet cabal
to throw their onyx gauntlet down
a slating arc of fallow sky.
Jun 17, 2016
Jun 17, 2016 at 9:58 AM UTC