"sculptors" poems
~ Ode to Spring ~
Cherry blossoms filled with bloom
rhododendron’s sweet perfume
warming winds feign summer’s breeze
songbirds singing from the trees
Open windows, déjà vu
sunsets filled with graceful hues
families gather on their strolls
Mother Nature for the soul
Baseball season at the park
evenings lifted from the dark
daylight savings' finally here
patios for wine and beer
Cleaning house and planting seeds
rebirth fills the days and deeds
picnic baskets, hummingbirds
poets find their way in words
Kaleidoscope of bedding plants
shorts in favour over pants
farmers markets, garage sales
power-wash the decks and rails
Hiking, tennis, gardening
inhale the freshness of the spring!
painters, sculptors shape their art
gather here with grateful hearts
Mar 31, 2019
Mar 31, 2019 at 1:15 PM UTC
An enigmatic smile she’s dressed with to chant mystery,
Poets and bards with their magical poesy tried the mystery,
Philosophers and thinkers broke their minds to unravel the secrecy,
Scientists and law makers built hypotheses and verdicts to read hers,
Painters and sculptors fatigued with their colours and clay,
Actors and directors enacted to unknot the thread of obscurity.
Odes and epics, long-written, attempted to sing Lisa’s Smile;
But reflections of their beloveds’ smile read in their verses,
Philosophies and thoughts expressed in huge volumes;
But less understood even the painter’s invention,
Theories and laws built around Science and Law;
But little is the outcome of their propositions sans the mystery,
Colours and clay played on mighty imaginative realms;
But Mona Lisa ne’er spoke of her mystery Smile.
Enactments on massive stages thrilled the collective audiences;
But Mona Lisa hid the mystery of her Smile.
I walked around the garden of poetry with fragrance of mystery,
I saw a poem in her distinctive beauty ruling my mind’s eye.
She smiled at my heart and in turn my heart smiled at her,
Her smile taught me a mystery and it took time to read it;
Yet there was a veil betwixt us, and I took my plume to write.
She took my heart unto her, and I romped in joy.
She’s been decked with melody and rhymes,
And the string of verses stretched beyond the horizon,
Where the mystery of Lisa’s Smile be found.
She took me with her beyond the horizon,
And I followed her with no utterance till our destination.
She laughed at me for my silence;
Yet she smiled unto me; but her smile looked unfathomable.
She smiled and smiled at me; yet she had no utterance for me;
She looked a little bit puzzling unto me, and I had no answer;
Yet her smile dwelled in me, and I invoked the Muse of Poetry.
“Thou art to be a silent lover, and her smile is the answer unto thee,
She’s the Mona Lisa; she can’t speak, but smile and smile.”
I lay on the soil of the kingdom of poetry, imbibing Lisa’s Smile,
I adorn her smile; I worship her smile; I revere her smile,
Let me not move away from the garden of poetry
Till Lisa’s Smile is translated unto me.
I waited and waited and I found the answer:
Lisa smiles and her smile is the love of silence.
My heart rests in silence that her love is felt within.
She uttered into me:”Speak not, but love with smile,
And that the mystery of my Smile and my Smile lasts.”
I know why Mona Lisa smiles.
She loves me with her silent Smile.
Sep 15, 2015
Sep 15, 2015 at 5:17 AM UTC
An enigmatic smile she’s dressed with to chant mystery,
Poets and bards with their magical poesy tried the mystery,
Philosophers and thinkers broke their minds to unravel the secrecy,
Scientists and law makers built hypotheses and verdicts to read hers,
Painters and sculptors fatigued with their colours and clay,
Actors and directors enacted to unknot the thread of obscurity.
Odes and epics, long-written, attempted to sing Lisa’s Smile;
But reflections of their beloveds’ smile read in their verses,
Philosophies and thoughts expressed in huge volumes;
But less understood even the painter’s invention,
Theories and laws built around Science and Law;
But little is the outcome of their propositions sans the mystery,
Colours and clay played on mighty imaginative realms;
But Mona Lisa ne’er spoke of her mystery Smile.
Enactments on massive stages thrilled the collective audiences;
But Mona Lisa hid the mystery of her Smile.
I walked around the garden of poetry with fragrance of mystery,
I saw a poem in her distinctive beauty ruling my mind’s eye.
She smiled at my heart and in turn my heart smiled at her,
Her smile taught me a mystery and it took time to read it;
Yet there was a veil betwixt us, and I took my plume to write.
She took my heart unto her, and I romped in joy.
She’s been decked with melody and rhymes,
And the string of verses stretched beyond the horizon,
Where the mystery of Lisa’s Smile be found.
She took me with her beyond the horizon,
And I followed her with no utterance till our destination.
She laughed at me for my silence;
Yet she smiled unto me; but her smile looked unfathomable.
She smiled and smiled at me; yet she had no utterance for me;
She looked a little bit puzzling unto me, and I had no answer;
Yet her smile dwelled in me, and I invoked the Muse of Poetry.
“Thou art to be a silent lover, and her smile is the answer unto thee,
She’s the Mona Lisa; she can’t speak, but smile and smile.”
I lay on the soil of the kingdom of poetry, imbibing Lisa’s Smile,
I adorn her smile; I worship her smile; I revere her smile,
Let me not move away from the garden of poetry
Till Lisa’s Smile is translated unto me.
I waited and waited and I found the answer:
Lisa smiles and her smile is the love of silence.
My heart rests in silence that her love is felt within.
She uttered into me:”Speak not, but love with smile,
And that the mystery of my Smile and my Smile lasts.”
I know why Mona Lisa smiles.
She loves me with her silent Smile.
Sep 15, 2015
Sep 15, 2015 at 3:07 AM UTC
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!
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Painters, by the highest degree of inspiration,
And poets who with the Muse commune,
Command in their respective trades un-
Common craftmanship, exquisite creation
Of pen and brush upon the parchment
And canvass, through unfettered figment.
Gifted: poets, painters and musicians. Three
Geniuses on this terrestrial plane, with mind
As efficient as the moon in its fullest grind,
As do all artistic souls whose mastery
In finest workmanship are seen. Worship
The God of arts ye astronauts in spaceship,
For poets and painters are cardinal in artistic
Enrolment--and no less endowed are many another
Like sculptors--with thoughts solitary and cryptic.
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 4:53 PM UTC
******* white people;
hide their racism behind
vapid "opinion".
******* white folks will
argue you can't argue with
results and numbers
because white people
can strip race from the issue
and swear it's "equal".
White people without
culture or identity,
strip it from others.
Call you naked as
they strut in stolen clothing.
Full of silicone.
**** with white people,
find out they know the struggle
by the article.
They can sweat big stuff,
but their racism is in
the cracks and seeping.
Disappointingly,
you can't trust white people for
**** not even me.
Not Bush, not Clinton,
Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders,
******* Macklemore,
Not Bill O'Reilly,
and not Jon Stewart, and not
viral feminists/
white feminism,
Taylor Swift's white sisterhood,
their artists, music,
writers, poetry,
actors, authors, painters and
sculptors and bloggers,
their politicians,
obviously, but also
their lawyers, doctors,
their engineers and
scientists and businesses,
economists or
pastors, preachers, religion,
programmers, products,
video games and novels;
They will let you down.
The rich or the poor,
it really doesn't matter.
They will let you down.
Feb 21, 2016
Feb 21, 2016 at 1:53 PM UTC
And the age ended, and the last deliverer died.
In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe:
The sudden shadow of the giant's enormous calf
Would fall no more at dusk across the lawn outside.
They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt
A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death,
But in a year the spoor had vanished from the heath;
The kobold's knocking in the mountain petered out.
Only the sculptors and the poets were half sad,
And the pert retinue from the magician's house
Grumbled and went elsewhere. The vanished powers were glad
To be invisible and free: without remorse
Struck down the sons who strayed their course,
And ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad.
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The shale abounds
above the pounding waves
with perfect snapshots
of a lost, impossible world
Images beyond the skill of sculptors,
ridged, spined and rippled
frozen in rock, of rock -
who could have guessed
how long the armour would protect?
And yet -
trilobites
who ruled the shallows
when dinosaurs were but a glint
in Pachamama's eye,
are dead, gone, passed over
in the battle for existence.
While in the boiling surf below,
the jellyfish
who still blithely ride the tides
insolently call:
"Good luck wi thae shells, boys -
"Bet yis'll be safe wi thaim!"
and disappear
in a bubble of translucent laughter.
Mar 6, 2011
Mar 6, 2011 at 10:30 AM UTC
When I grow old, I hope I have wooden bones
that chip with a sculptors chisel and decompose
into the same soil as the dirt underneath my nails.
When I grow old, I hope I've found my green thumb,
and haven't forgotten Eden's hum, to have a garden to
drink coffee in.
When I grow old, I hope I still smoke tobacco from a pipe,
and read by candlelight, I hope I look back on life
and feel at peace when I go to bed at night.
When I grow old, I hope I find company in a woman with
grey hair whose somber, but bright eyes still stare at the Robins through the morning sun's glare. I hope she hasn't forgotten
how to smile when I'm being senile. And her joyous laugh still resonates deep in her stomach.
I hope we talk about the weather, how last winter was
better, and that we grieve well growing old together.
When I grow old, I hope the young ones will take my
mundane advice, and even if they find it trite,
pretend that it's wise.
I hope I have granddaughters and sons who'll be
just as excited for the sunrise as I, sharing the same
childish wonder for dawn's light sky.
When I grow old, I hope I still hope,
and haven't sunken into the stodgy bitterness that
plagues old men,
but still remain with fiery kind eyes that yearn
to turn earth into God's garden again.
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 2:10 PM UTC
"The pity of war, the pity war distills". - Wilfred Owen"
Just as a feral war begs for armistice,
a season of peace engenders
a violence vacuum that begs to be filled
as surely as a hollow begs for a pond.
It seems a cosmic battle rages
between the oversouls of people
who would chisel a sculpture to grace
and those who would hack off its arms.
History’s fools fire up their bully horns
shouting proud oratory to ignorance -
and lemmings goose-step to the precipice -
doomed to plunge into a sea of misery.
Then there is quiet - guilty and reflective.
How could we let this happen
with so much gain and loss in the balance?
and the sculptors of civilization
find fresh marble to once again
carve reason, beauty, purpose
from the acrid ashes of pride.
But the oversoul of hate will brood and re-fester
as long as it's thought noble to **** for a cause.
© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 8:50 AM UTC
I always loved your hands.
Not in any kind of lustful way, just the look of them.
I still love your hands, henna-ed and smooth
And so soft- startlingly soft-
If my fingers accidentally brush yours.
I used to marvel when you'd lace your fingers through mine-so casual- as we walked,
At how they felt like moonlight looked.
I love to watch you work, the careful way you do everything
Like it's all art, like it's all important.
Hell, you make a sandwich like you're carving a sculpture
And I find myself watching you, fascinated like always,
And I want to laugh, and I want to tell you you're beautiful.
And my smile turns wry
And I say nothing
Because who thinks of things like that?
I have a favorite photograph from long ago
Of your hands as you were drawing.
They've not changed.
That's why I always ask "Is that ring new?"
Because I catch myself noticing them
The way you might catch yourself absently holding a smooth stone you left in your pocket and forgot was there.
I used to secretly wish that someday you'd draw on me in henna
And I'd have the daring to ask you
To leave a handprint on my shoulder
Like a promise.
I've told you you look like a sculpture, too perfect not to be planned
And
I remember long hours in the museums as a child
Walking through a maze of white porcelain and marble women
Wondering how rock could look softer than my own skin.
I wanted to reach out and touch
See if they would be cold and hard like they should be
Or warm and velvety.
And their hands... So graceful and light-
The sculptors of old strove for perfection
Believing that they had not found it in humanity
Always imagining something smoother, something lovelier, something more delicate and more exquisite.
(You weren't around yet.)
Your hands always reminded me of something from that soaring hall
With all its silky looking statues and its ceiling of cross-paned windows.
So when I sit here, watching Art
Make ham sandwiches
It feels so incongruous.
Something here just doesn't belong.
And I can't tell if it is me or you
But honestly
How many people can say
They have watched Artemis sit down at the counter beside them
As if she has no idea she's divine?
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 5:17 PM UTC
reading book with the same title by Stephenie Meyer ...
There you stood in
the pouring downpour
each raindrop dressed
in the scent of
your damp feral being
I gaze long and hard
at those hands
how beautiful they looked!
maybe they were those
of a sculptors
having sculpted
a thousand deaths before
with sheer perfection
Every time
lightening struck
the night would morph from
gray to black to ocher
just like…
those eyes
of yours (?)
those strides promised ecstasy
as they advanced towards me
only when the fangs
dug deep into my fevered flesh
could I Smell blood for the first time
crunchy…salty and peppery
I never wanted the rain to end
Feb 26, 2011
Feb 26, 2011 at 5:48 PM UTC
We all start with blank faces.
Ebony or
Ivory or
Olive or
Anything in between.
Skin so dark they don't sell the shade at Sephora.
Skin so light you've got to mix the color with white to make it match.
Whatever the color, it's all the same skin.
We all start with blank faces
Made of cells and covered in blemishes
Stretched thin across our cheekbones
Or hanging loose and wrinkled with age,
With lines on our foreheads like
Punishment
for laughing too much.
When did laughter become such a grievous crime?
We all start with blank faces.
… and then we become Van Gogh.
With expert brush strokes, we paint.
We coat ourselves with thick layers of pastey goop like Elmer's glue
Paint it on thick to cover our blemishes and red spots
We top it off with pigment like powdered sugar on sweets
Not knowing that the more opaque our makeup is, the more transparent.
We all start with blank faces.
… and then we become sculptors
Contouring and contorting to conform to unrealistic standards.
We highlight our best features and conceal the rest.
We conceal the redness of our cheeks just to paint it on again with blush.
We paint wings on our eyes although we'll never fly.
We all start with blank faces.
… and then we become victims of consumerism
Spending our money on different shades of the same **** thing
They raise the prices because they know they'll sell it to us anyway
They force it upon us, then shame us for becoming slaves to it
We are the victims and the perpetrators.
We all start with blank faces
… and then we become artists
… and then we become victims
… and then we become warriors
This is our war paint.
Oct 15, 2015
Oct 15, 2015 at 11:34 AM UTC
Listless.
the psychology of a social construct so easily broken down.
cracks so exposed and well worn wedges do pleasures deeds.
electromagnetic synapses delving into the degree of damage.
Prose for ill minds comes in droves and withholds no force.
fates memory holds in high regard the lasting forgotten.
drowned stone fire pits lost within reflections craters
Tis so easily tapped through wayward degrading honesty
neither gasp nor exclaim as treacherous glare busts horizons
Proclaim righteousness for the still air of true possibilities
crushing microcosmos with known unfounded pestilence
Flare and stone berate the cold states of spectrum reach
Reminders on the dust tails of impact praise residing
well woven whispers dilute the hollow hold resonating
but of course destruction impact anguish abides
but of course destruction. sculptors require fire.
Aug 11, 2012
Aug 11, 2012 at 12:32 AM UTC
SMOKE of autumn is on it all.
The streamers loosen and travel.
The red west is stopped with a gray haze.
They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,
They make a long-tailed rider
In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.. . .
Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River.
There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol routes west.
Around each slippery padding rat, a fan of ripples; in the silence of dusk a faint wash of ripples, the padding of the rats going west, in a dark and shivering river gold.
(A newspaper in my pocket says the Germans pierce the Italian line; I have letters from poets and sculptors in Greenwich Village; I have letters from an ambulance man in France and an I. W. W. man in Vladivostok.)
I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan of ripples on a sheet of river gold.. . .
Better the blue silence and the gray west,
The autumn mist on the river,
And not any hate and not any love,
And not anything at all of the keen and the deep:
Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor,
And the new corn shoveled in bushels
And the pumpkins brought from the corn rows,
Umber lights of the dark,
Umber lanterns of the loam dark.
Here a dog head dreams.
Not any hate, not any love.
Not anything but dreams.
Brother of dusk and umber.
1.3k
what fragments lay in stone and silent wait
for sunrise creeping stealthily through dark
to back-light marbled forms who knew Petrarch
truncated arms which strain to touch and sate
a cold and calculated yearning carved
in everlasting porous rock compressed
as otherworldly beauty barely dressed
they stand exposed and gorgeous, proud yet starved
to feast on passion's fragments etched inside
by sculptors long since sated, fed and dead
who pounded love with hammer, chisel, sweat
from abstract concept into sanctified
emotion pulsing from unbreathing stone;
stories bled from humankind alone
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 4:35 AM UTC
Go on, file a paper,
make an imaginary notice of imaginary things,
and build on this a physical entity.
See how deaf the masses will go,
from hearing the Latin tongue:
parchment, and paper,
tomes of dust and sand.
Make a rule because you can,
and cement again the fetters,
our fathers and mothers cleft in twain.
Ireland is still an English land,
while English law remains.
Tories breed like rabbits,
so don't ask me what's wrong,
why you're unsatisfied with your oppression,
why enough is never enough,
till the colonial fetish is propagated,
into every heart and mind there,
worked deep into the furrows of our holy ground.
Will you never have done?
Are you not content with your own misery,
without inflicting it on others?
Is it not enough to be in chains,
but to love and ****** those chains?
Oh mighty sculptors of our race,
chip chip away and see what's left.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 4:50 PM UTC
When we awake from the mist
I am in shadow,
the perambulance of
grief revisited,
till the lengthening toombstone
dwarfs hyperion-
a sculptors cast ,my shell my heart
The gestapo of faith revisited
that others may from my net
Dream sweet prision free-
psychedelic arrest eclipsing
aeons lost fears.
The secret of the hate filled chamber
green gas ,green light &
mercy all,
cracking under boot
ribs target
sheltering from a fathers love.
Were you or I to slumber
nor stir in walking shade
what nets of love entomb us
lest we rise-
the shining ,the living yet are gone
earth's first wake
Yet quickened beyond eyes recognition
The silver sash my silence brings;
a field soughed deep and empty
a fitting palace
for a king
The denseless hollows of my tears
or yet unvapoured from the ground
the shadow of the sky appears
enshrined
in rainbow's fallen glass.
If a child is not a fallen god
- why so unquiet and shallow the grave
that holds the brave emancipator
in such a gentle grasp .
Till in death we meet asunder
apart can never live
a blossom as in winter hangs its head
so a laurel wreath astutely made our measure
must be cast...
Sep 27, 2010
Sep 27, 2010 at 7:29 AM UTC
what have i to do with these grips,
these squared, white knuckles
holding tight to handle bars?
what have i to do with these empty stares,
eyes void of truth?
these "fill-in-the-bubble, A B or C, music only reaches the ears" types of humans
attempting to tell me how to carry out my existence,
attempting to tell me the most efficient
practical
mindless ways to die?
attempting
to tell me
to show me
the most rewarding ways
to die.
what have i to do with these sculptors
who try and quantify the rain,
who try and evaporate
the sun?
what have i to do with these ideas of perfection, of what is best?
these assumptions of false fulfillment,
these preludes to orderly, institutionalized chaos
and contempt?
what have i to do with all of these cardboard boxes
which cannot differentiate between being filled
empty
open
closed
soft
rough
dry
loved?
what have i to do with those who cannot detect their own storms,
their own energy waiting to explode?
what have i to do with one shade of blue?
what have i to do with feet that cannot move,
knees that cannot bend?
what have i to do with white houses
black cars
trimmed bushes
a front porch?
what have i to do with stationary?
what have i to do with these wings
unless they are free to flutter?
what have i to do with structure
with corners
with average
with plain?
what have i to do with boredom
with settling
with insignificant breath?
what have i to do with waste?
what
have i
to do
with waste.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 12:09 AM UTC
At times,
I get a creative tornado
in my head,
as I am going along
in my daily life
And I can't wait to go home
to sit in front of my computer
to write all my poetic thoughts down
I'm convinced they are masterpieces,
that people will be blown away
by my work
but.............
All is silent on the response button
And suddenly I think
I am not that talented
That my work really wasn't
so great to begin with
This must be what all
artists go through...
painters, authors, sculptors,
screenwriters, playwrights,
songwriters and musicians
Doubting themselves
when art lies in the eye
of the beholder
Its all part of the subjective
nature of art
Nov 16, 2010
Nov 16, 2010 at 5:13 PM UTC
What are the thoughts you're hiding
behind those stoney eyes?
What dreams have you whispered
to the million passers-by?
What happiness will ever find you
if you always stay so cold?
What trouble will befall you
if you never break your mould?
What substance will you treasure
if there is nothing there to find?
What stolen moments would you have
if I could see into your mind?
What life is this that has you jailed?
what sculptors tool won't speak?
Did he realise that he was strong
but he has left you weak?
Jun 4, 2010
Jun 4, 2010 at 12:00 PM UTC
Across the ocean's dome,
Controlled by piercing shouts without a doubt;
On an altar in the distance:
An open book with censored words!
Tear a page,
Observe the rage.
Not what any freedom fighter would.
In a rowboat in the open,
Draw the source of their devotion.
Pencil sketch the jagged beard,
And stretch the nose a thousand years.
What a time to strike some fear!
The terrorists will echo with madness,
The pen is your sword.
The innocent will run to the forests,
And the artists make war.
Across the desert homes,
Contained by giant seas to some degree;
In a planetary orbit:
A crying team with crooked teeth!
See the page,
The winds enrage.
Not what any freedom lover should.
Bullets charge at the comedian's door,
Burning down all the carpenter's lore.
Sculptors mourne over severed stones,
The innocent turn, yearn, learn...
The invasions form, warn, and burn.
As the terrorists echo with madness,
Hold the pen as your sword.
As the innocent run to the forests,
Let the artists make war.
Throw the drawings ashore!
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 10:42 PM UTC
Life is better with art in it
Beautiful, bold, and from the heart
It speaks to you
In many different ways
It brings people together
From the beauty it contains
Since the beginning of time
It has defined people’s cultures
Creating something in common
Like statues and their sculptors
Life without art in it
Is like you are living
With a heart that is absent.
Feb 24, 2012
Feb 24, 2012 at 9:25 AM UTC