"serried" poems
Brother, our young summers held us in a long chain like the phalanx of bronzed soldiers forward flung,
And the lion was skinned and hung out to dry like the sunned-fur of the beach at Marathon.
Brother, help me to dream again.
Brother, our yellowed days shook us like serried Hoplites of an atomic age,
Shoulder to shoulder, friction rubbed, all ranks split from the fissioned-flanks.
Brother, help me to dream again.
Storm-footed Titans of heat, dust, and irradiated wind pry from a ruptured Tartarus,
The flanks are an open pulse; the scorch-song thirsts for its sea-cooling to stone.
Brother, the lion lives that wears your skull around its mane.
Brother, dream of me again, of Persian arrows and lances,
And my fallen eyes instead of yours pouring in
With a sea of lavender water and mists
And summers of once-were.
Jun 8, 2019
Jun 8, 2019 at 8:59 PM UTC
I.
I would not if I could undo my past,
Tho' for its sake my future is a blank;
My past for which I have myself to thank,
For all its faults and follies first and last.
I would not cast anew the lot once cast,
Or launch a second ship for one that sank,
Or drug with sweets the bitterness I drank,
Or break by feasting my perpetual fast.
I would not if I could: for much more dear
Is one remembrance than a hundred joys,
More than a thousand hopes in jubilee;
Dearer the music of one tearful voice
That unforgotten calls and calls to me,
"Follow me here, rise up, and follow here."
II.
What seekest thou, far in the unknown land?
In hope I follow joy gone on before;
In hope and fear persistent more and more,
As the dry desert lengthens out its sand.
Whilst day and night I carry in my hand
The golden key to ope the golden door
Of golden home; yet mine eye weepeth sore,
For long the journey is that makes no stand.
And who is this that veiled doth walk with thee?
Lo, this is Love that walketh at my right;
One exile holds us both, and we are bound
To selfsame home-joys in the land of light.
Weeping thou walkest with him; weepeth he?--
Some sobbing weep, some weep and make no sound.
III.
A dimness of a glory glimmers here
Thro' veils and distance from the space remote,
A faintest far vibration of a note
Reaches to us and seems to bring us near;
Causing our face to glow with braver cheer,
Making the serried mist to stand afloat,
Subduing languor with an antidote,
And strengthening love almost to cast out fear:
Till for one moment golden city walls
Rise looming on us, golden walls of home,
Light of our eyes until the darkness falls;
Then thro' the outer darkness burdensome
I hear again the tender voice that calls,
"Follow me hither, follow, rise, and come."
3.6k
So the church Christ was hit and buried
Under its ******* and its rubble.
In cellars, packed-up saints long serried,
Well out of hearing of our trouble.
One ****** still immaculate
Smiles on for war to flatter her.
She's halo'd with an old tin hat,
But a piece of hell will batter her.
3.5k
O lonely heart so timid of approach,
Like the shy tropic flower that shuts its lips
To the faint touch of tender finger tips:
What is your word? What question would you broach?
Your lustrous-warm eyes are too sadly kind
To mask the meaning of your dreamy tale,
Your guarded life too exquisitely frail
Against the daggers of my warring mind.
There is no part of the unyielding earth,
Even bare rocks where the eagles build their nest,
Will give us undisturbed and friendly rest.
No dewfall softens this vast belt of dearth.
But in the socket-chiseled teeth of strife,
That gleam in serried files in all the lands,
We may join hungry, understanding hands,
And drink our share of ardent love and life.
2.5k
A vicious dog came prowling in to bite and terrorise
feasting on the beautiful, creative and the wise
Chewing their creations and their principles to dust
Leaving all their brilliance to crumble, fade and rust
A snarling, grinding horror issued from its ****** jaws
the sound rolled all around me like a wave of black applause
I gathered my defences and prepared to go down well
My work would be my armour to defeat this hound of hell
My courage at the sticking point, my words in serried ranks
my songs and poems all arranged like waiting Sherman tanks
As those who had inspired me were cast down in their prime
I knew the beast was coming, it was nearly closing time
But just as I prepared myself to triumph or to die
The wretched creature shook itself and passed me right on by
It glanced just once behind it with a look that seemed to say,
"You poor, deluded fool - I didn't want you anyway!"
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 9:33 AM UTC
Looking out of the window;
a ribbon of duck-egg-blue sky,
fringed by the sun's late light,
is sandwiched by grey cumulus.
It frames Sycamore tree tops,
red tiled pyramids with their expectant aerials
pointing West, littering clean lines.
It is a mute view;
serried bins wait for the mornings collection,
cars sit dumb, curbed,
their daily commute completed.
Two starlings flit, silent,
and in the far distance a high contrail is picked out
in gold as a thread in blue silk.
For five years this view remains changeably the same;
unspoilt by the entropy of new perspectives.
This is the summer of un-broadcast malcontents,
pacified in Brazilian spectacle. Days simmer here and there.
Soap operas filter through,
made to massage the message
of consume and discard, of holidays and pistons.
And in the mornings, that never come,
we abandon the cars that cannot diverge
from work-honed routes,
taking to the air from Sycamores as Starlings.
June 2014
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 5:05 AM UTC
What passing grief for those who fall in battle?
Only the merest murmur of the press
A paragraph between the tittle tattle
With all the latest news of someone's dress.
A soldier's single death is not dramatic
No bugle call, no serried rank and file
There's no glamour in stress that's post-traumatic
Compared to new pics of an actor's smile.
I never served in war. I have no right
To take the part of soldiers or their kin
But maiming, burning, death or loss of sight
Deserve attention and remembrance in
A land that still sends doomed youth off to fight;
A land obsessed with how stars get so thin.
Nov 13, 2010
Nov 13, 2010 at 8:53 PM UTC
My heart’s elastic distend remains
Serried with shattered glass.
Grant me barrage, for I cannot bear
This despair.
Our palsied, maudlin yarn.
Strewn in memories
She has long foregone
Whilst my soul corrodes there.
I want to respire
But her fire is suffocating.
My infantry boots are sewn,
And father time marches on.
Fissure the seams, let me dream
Of a land where I am not locked
By the shadows of her music-
The light over my sheets.
Blinding, I cannot read the notes.
And this melody that weeps
From my aching fingertips-
Ravenous for velvet unfelt.
Alas, I eternally smolder.
All at once, barren and brimmed .
Let me spill my hate, my love.
Over the canvas of this silent reverie.
Aug 31, 2021
Aug 31, 2021 at 12:54 PM UTC
I breach the oak doors
Odiferous damp confronts
Mixes with incense
Serried box pews patiently
Wait for sermon or Larkin
Apr 25, 2010
Apr 25, 2010 at 7:12 AM UTC
I wish i had a friend
To comfort me in the end
Where my mom shed in tears
And I smiled in fear
What could happen next year?
With such a low place in here, I just can't inhale and every time I try I fail
serried l am, with my mothers complains
I try to comfort her again and again but, every time I fail
Every time the same drill, yeah you shouldn't stay at home of course!
You should go out there and travel the world
Because you have two boys that won't leave home
And what have i done? Nothing
Jan 3, 2018
Jan 3, 2018 at 3:28 PM UTC
Soliloquizing softly to a wine and sapphire sky,
I dreamt I scales those serried summits,
Mind and heaven harmonized
Ere long, my feelings blossomed,
And again they did recede
Aery undulations, to a sordid flame do lead
For as the twilight strips away
The radiant raiment worn by day
Time, that thief of life
Is sure to steal from me my youth
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 4:18 PM UTC
Behind the pain of
insecurity
So Indigenous
This rage inside me
violent I become,
So Magnificent,
In this solitude
Inside the silence,
Beyond the veil a
Frailty does exist
A monopoly
the madness of it,
the excess of the
one divine prophet
His sum that divides
Him all things abide
All things right and wrong
And the Tendrils of
That Mislead my eye
That long to hold fast
Til the final note
This fear seizing me
When Two become Three
The rage will silence
Past, present, future
When Two become Three
When Two become Three
When Two become Three
From Three become Five,
Five beyond the void
The sins will align
Devoid of color
From the nothingness,
Comes sweet surrender,
Oh, the ******* bliss
Serried and forlorn
It Repeats a wail
The solitude now
Rendered silent by
The broken spire of
This immortal tale
This one eternal
Savage root of life
Now the echos clear
fading into lies
The void falls silent
The meek become wise
To challenge the Son
Who so left them here
To remain in fear
Cast aside all hope
Listen to my voice
Embrace this madness
Restore the balance
Give us now the peace
That you promised me
suffered and you died
For all of our sins
On day number three
Arise From your Death
Claim your destiny
And fulfill your oath
come again to bleed
All your wretched sins
Now fulfill your words
So we can all be
In death Committed
To the loving arms
Of your majesty
The king of deceit
Sep 15, 2019
Sep 15, 2019 at 10:57 AM UTC
I have been at sea in a hurricane,
A tempest if you will,
Unimaginable force piling salt water
Into huge forms that surge and crash,
Collapse and reform,
A never ending assault,
At sea the serried ranks
Of mountainous water
Come in succession,
Over and over and over,
Crashing and crushing
With seeming unending maelevolance,
But every storm gives way to calm
And every sea will settle,
And that is where I am right now,
Rocked by still lumpy post-storm waves,
And I will no more challenge the sea's power,
But respect it and indeed
You
Nov 29, 2023
Nov 29, 2023 at 6:27 AM UTC
I shouldn't be...sorry
I couldn't be...sorry
I can't be...sorry
I won't be...sorry
Why should I be...sorry?
How could I be...sorry?
Why can't I be...sorry?
Sorry.
Sorrow.
Sullied.
Serried.
I should be proud of the smile I wear, right?
...no?
...I'm sorry...
Jul 24, 2017
Jul 24, 2017 at 6:00 AM UTC
Tongues of fire stab the sky;
fiery discharge from the mouths of serried bells
Thunder rumbles through still air;
death’s express trained on someone’s nowhere.
Dark clouds roil in the distance;
destruction’s twisted smoke.
A shrill bird sings.
The pockmarked face of mother earth
recoils at the touch of invading ghosts.
Foot follows foot through mud and tall grass.
Torment is a green maze.
Turn, twist, walk in paranoid silence;
nightmare topiary.
No exit,
only a door to Hell
Lives rush past terror-filled eyes;
spirits leak into the earth.
There is no requiem—
only keening women to pipe us on.
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 10:49 AM UTC
First of all, I'm interested in the cold
And a state in which you're living couldn't be washed away
Like a hopeless dream, that some of us stare in hopeless exuding
Of doing what can die and that, dies because of seeking ease as it lives
Truantly yours, a trunk full of things symbolizing complicated things in a box full of simple items
Whimsical farms o' yonder, serried
Happen, a dream they happen
Rye and risen' with the clement weather
Go ahead, miss your flight
To go breezin' in some lost serene time
When you'd really smother yourself in need
If you're deeper individualism allows that breeding, just by the essential summation of communication, by all means, go ahead and seek
Jul 26, 2019
Jul 26, 2019 at 2:39 PM UTC
Behind locked doors the Gamblers dare
to cast our fates without a care.
Like puppeteers they pull our strings
and use us as a child’s playthings.
Upon the tables of the gods,
with wagers cast at any odds,
they stand us up in serried rows,
then knock us down like dominoes.
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019 at 2:57 PM UTC
*
*there is a friend
in silence
in serried coffers
of heavy air
carving pieces
of you to feed the
lullabies
stifling the last
of convulsions
leaving the rest
to fall asleep
in arms of the
white noise*
*
Mar 28, 2024
Mar 28, 2024 at 1:30 PM UTC
It was our final day together
During an awkward time, strolling purposely in the woods
Beyond town, sheltered by the interconnected canopy
Of colluding beech, joined in suppositious intimacy.
Pausing where serried rows of heavy-leafed fern gathered
Around a half-hidden stream,
And we stopped, lying down to make love.
In the cold fading light.
Fox and badger shuffled anxiously away, spooked by our jerky movements and unsteady moans.
We parted as the moon began blooming in the dark sky,
She returning to her husband, I to my wife.
I saw her again, I, an old man in a ***** coat fluttering in the wind,
Snatching at dying memories, remembering
A hundred other women in a hundred places,
Their features in lustful heat evaporating like water.
Seated on a park bench, a grandmother with a swollen leg
Bent over and senile, I, in a momentary, flashing epiphany, recognised her smile.
Her eyes, that once I loved, shrivelled by cataracts, she bellowed
At ghosts in the sunlight.
Identifying her long-dead husband in the gathering shadows.
Our frequent copulation had always been long and energetic
Enough to light up half the town, our laughter lighted
Up the rest. Walking through the fields or sitting in modest
Restaurants, our conversation roamed from favoured food to preferred, most stimulating books.
Mutually absorbed, we happily exhausted our youth!
Fifty years later, dribbling through
Pavement traffic, a strange, erratic
Coalition of people, bikes and mobility scooters,
She ****** out a shrivelled arm towards me,
An exclamation mark on a memory of soft bleached skin
Dripping with love,
Vaguely recalling me as a shade from a more
Hopeful time.
I shrank away from that shambling, once beautiful, form,
Refusing and betraying her,
Our lives and bodies once gloriously entwined; her fate also mine.
I remained unalterably committed to her altered end,
Minds fading gently together.
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 6:06 PM UTC
If I had prayed for every time I wanted to become a wolf. I'd have become you and you'd become me. A wolves cry howling "bon appetit."
The more I look, the bitterer I become.
The less I look, the wiser I become of things seemingly out of my hands.
Feb 25, 2019
Feb 25, 2019 at 4:06 PM UTC
In the existence
You will
Find your bliss
With the essence of pepper
A simple passage of paper
Of the vociferous vulpine in the green forest
Unseen in this coniferous leaf
Cerulean eyes gaze at the frozen lake
Miracles of Strangers
Foxes running from every empty glass of water
Taking away the serried scenes of defafening silence
There must some way to keep this away
From the authorities
I must confess
I have been deprived
It has been for long
But, not for eternity
With the same breath
I turn
My life
My love
Peace walks among shadows of crowds that you can't explore
Type so slow, I probably haven't typed a word
I'm censored
I'm spoken
I'm in love
In the beleaguering bliss
Mar 27, 2019
Mar 27, 2019 at 5:30 PM UTC
Search your soul, linger till you grow
Old in fields of gold, rain comes so does the hope
Hostile buildings flying around the head, like buzzing bees
Criminalizing every last convict
Coining every last name in the prison register
Treason and trainwrecks have conviction in common
Break the tough chains, with tough breaks
Tinkering like thirty-years
Breeding and birth is a part of the fleeting memory, of high and dry
Try and you can quench the thirst of a couple of people at the end of the road and the rotation of crowds
Brimming with satisfaction, I can't find the child that's always dissatisfied
A bridge on time of carnage would be better than burning the commodores
****** mysteries and bebop, tell you can light your own enigma
Lady luck is fickle, she got razor-sharp claws and got 'em all
Too bad she tears up the fateful roads that are meant to cross-point like the stars on Moonlight drive
Fear in the darkness and in the loathing of Las Vegas
Leers and glances of the beatnik and bookish boys, gracing every with their masculine advances
Being bums and being contended
Pardon me, c'est la vie, cinema mon amour
The shards of saviors slashing samurai swords and serried sands
Lands, composed the Magna Carta of the time and sending off
The harakiri killed the suicide solution, the feudal times with Japan in the cherry blossom
Trees falling transient photos, stills on the artist within, touch the sword
Can't get the arrows and bows, quip, fly the mistakes by the taste of killing stakes
Bleeding soldiers, in the thousand men in gracious faceless
Read-write the scrolls that stand the test, emptiness is just a reflection of the blind
Eye to eye, blinking can't avert an artist's eyes
This is the hummingbird that hides, the cusp of time and cutting vernacular
The chirping and belonging of the terse stories of the counts and countesses of the summer loathing
Heralding the sun, and it's God in the sands of time and talk of tides
Working like the winds and winding solar clocks, and lunar dials
Tellin' and reelin' in the direction of the red skies, see where they make their mirages
Jul 30, 2019
Jul 30, 2019 at 6:50 PM UTC
The spaces that lie in between ***
Heavy like the ghost between us
Haunting the skin of deliquesced nights,
And the noon of thought.
We awaken in serried falls,
The veil of dusk melting in between my thighs,
And the sin of your tapered thoughts,
Hastening the arrival of starry white lies,
And night’s black spell of seclusion.
Bring your husked limbs toward me,
And seep into my bones under the shadows.
Turn off the lights in me
In the dead of night
And the noon of thought.
An eclipsed silence leaks in between ***
Unexchanged like the words between us.
Dec 25, 2022
Dec 25, 2022 at 1:13 PM UTC