"shale" poems
~ Ode to Joy ~
White gold ambassador
canine past eight
soul seekers ascend
(from cirque to seven)
to peak
to peak
to peak
Saddlerock spearhead
ptarmigan
and flute
Christmas trees
in winter glades
over dusted crystal scape
Fissile (eiger) sanction
open shale and tusk
indiscriminate members
roll the bluffs
and ice falls
above the
north face steep
Dead silent dawn
breathless, bitter cold
the beating hearts
and brahmas
warm the spirit
of pakalolo
Dec 11, 2016
Dec 11, 2016 at 8:38 PM UTC
multimedia macramé
sloshing propaganda sewage
on the unsuspecting public
***** lice infest ****** hill folk
west Virginia outbreak threatening the world
as we know it
flesh altering nonsense explicitly graphed
charting movement of microbes
on air, land, and/ or sea
global currents the new deliverer of death –
infected immigrants sit smiling
internment camps providing nutrition
never before experienced
as non-natives negotiate freedom
by submitting to vaccinations baths
and the standard delousing powder –
paranoid hand-sanitizer users
glued to the **** tube
spray their shoes with disinfectant
praying to an absent GOD for health
while shoveling GMO corn chips into ever widening
mouth holes
pharmaceutical companies lick lifeless lips
as Congress recognizes their humanity
while rejecting the concerns of the poor
…..no money in it –
outlandish claims of outbreaking Ebola
flood the mainstream outlets
fear: version – infinity
one more plague plan to stimulate new legislation
more law
no touching
even looking at the infirm can be cause for isolation
radiation treatments
courtesy of Fukushima, reactors 1-4 –
new found focus on fracturing the shale
releasing new oil reserves
and old bacteria
dinosaur killers
free-radicals
radically changing the genetic code
humanity altered
once again –
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 12:16 PM UTC
The two collieries where I was employed,
Houses now stand winders destroyed.
From a window where I controlled the flow,
I could see the horizon far and low.
I can also see sunrise and set,
Pictures past I won’t forget.
Through the shifts seasons would go,
From summer sun to winter snow.
To wake one morning already too late,
Decisions were made to close the gate.
Work was gone and mates were lost,
Ripped apart at great cost.
Left us with a grey slurry beach,
The nanny goat path we walked to reach.
Down to the coast a ***** line,
Carried shale from the mine.
Through our town they ran so fast,
To tip more waste upon the blast.
Now I sit where I want to be,
Looking out at the great North Sea.
From chemical beach to clean east shore,
The north east pits are no more.
From brownie box in old dark room,
To Digital with super zoom.
Memories fade but photos show,
All we really need to know.
St Marys church to Hawthorn hive,
These scenes of Seaham will survive.
Apr 21, 2010
Apr 21, 2010 at 7:48 AM UTC
Trump sat in his tower, supreme in every way
Whatever he wanted, he only had to say
The President to the press corps, of him, one day made fun
I’m gonna replace you bud, when your term is done
He started his campaign, they said he was a joke
But he became popular with all the common folk
The stuff that he spouted, was more and more absurd
But the stupid morons, swallowed his every word
He’s a Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist **** Potus
Even though the sound of it is really quite atrocious
Maybe we could change him, if we tried hypnosis
He’s a Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist **** Potus
There's no such thing as climate change, everything is fine
Burning coal and shale oil is perfectly divine
Those lefty enviornmentalists love to yell and shout
(making lots of money is what I'm all about)
The Mexicans are gonna pay when I build the wall
And I’ll lock you up Clinton, guaranteed next fall
No one could believe it, when the count was done
The blonde haired, orange faced, nitwit, actually had won
He’s a Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist **** Potus
Even though the sound of it is really quite atrocious
Maybe we could change him, if we tried hypnosis
He’s a Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist **** Potus
It’s just that he was used to, always getting his way
He signed executive orders, on his very first day
The Judges over ruled him, and put him in his place
They threw the executive orders, right back in his face
He’s having lot’s of problems, with the phoney press
And though he tweets daily, it’s still causing distress
If he bombed the Syrians, maybe it would make amends
But all he succeeded in doing, was **** off his Russian friends
He’s a Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist **** Potus
Even though the sound of it is really quite atrocious
Maybe we could change him, if we tried hypnosis
He’s a Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist **** Potus
The FBI investigate, so he fired their chief
The replacement just carried on, Trump got no relief
Congress is thinking, let's put Trump against the wall
Pence is in the wings, just waiting for their call
He’s a Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist **** Potus
Even though the sound of it is really quite atrocious
Maybe we could change him, if we tried hypnosis
He’s a Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist **** Potus
May 21, 2017
May 21, 2017 at 3:55 PM UTC
-
*Lead dripping from
empty sockets,
a clock hissed in serpent hours,
it's venom oozing from the crystal walls*
it's 4 a.m. you insomnia lunatic.
*I'm too busy admiring,
how the man in the moon slithered through
these blinds on my soul-swept window.
That night I was a canvas,
as the moonlight stripped my arm raw of shale,
and tinted my skin with*
silvertongue.
***And when he was finished,
tiger stripes tattooed my thinning vessel.***
-
Jun 30, 2015
Jun 30, 2015 at 7:00 PM UTC
Sitting solid on a thinking throne
Drinking bottles that sing melancholy tones
Singing lone, resonating to your bones
Your fragile little frame cannot save the show
Not when you're casting skys clouding with crows
Your mind is pale, sick to it's stomach
Everything up there can't reconcile, but luck
It's begun to resonate quietly like a comets tail
When your playing on mental jungle gyms of shale
I'm sure there's things that keep you up
Drugs, and alcohol, and fasting all day
A cyclical belt of asteroid tales
You think so much you've burnt an image
Of cotton dreams, so soft and harsh, but somehow sail
You may never grasp them, but you've reached so far you've become so frail
It's hard to try, it's even harder to pry
Open your heart, and let yourself cry
The castles you build are built of tears, and the cemetery near is calling your fears
The foundation is weak, and your pastor you seek, but everything you've found thus far, oblique
Cast your shadows as you will, but they're just funny puppets you've conjured in the night still
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 1:36 AM UTC
Cold stoles the coast in geisha voiles
of pawned Atlantic mourning, where
The plangent skirl of larids
carry through the vast exquisite
plains of February emptiness.
Aloft on coronal ruin, she flew
in free form falling, between the spheres
she grew in brightness, and by her stroke,
the moping shale, appeared , as if transformed.
She blessed the face of stained glass saints
hung loud on hallowed walls, From a
palisade of glinting brinks, she
hauled deserted chapels into
parishes of lambent wake
their majesties , reborn.
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 3:47 AM UTC
The water paints with sound
redamancy upon the shore
and our hearts.
And the cascade reminds me
Time can be beautiful,
Love is first shallow,
And then deep,
Oh, so deep, my love,
The color of shale and cobalt
We sit on the rocky shore
And stack stones into a cairn
Making the moment, the place.
Finally, he says, *we’ve seen the ocean
Together.*
As if seeing the vastness of Resurrection Bay
Perfects our Pacific love
Deepening.
We skip a few rocks
To test the shallows
To find the deep
To discover what we believe awaits us
In the future:
Love like waves
Pulled by the moon--
My hand pulled by yours
To go home.
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 3:41 PM UTC
///
*Before 200 million years ago
there was a single super continent,
named the Pangea,
and you have broken the Pangea
into two parts,
the Laurasia
and the Gondwanaland
by a single water body,
called the Tethys Sea
and we have seen,
the first sign of the life
on the beautiful black shale,
the blue green Algae
///
@ Musfiq us shaleheen*
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 2:58 AM UTC
The sea cast a gift ashore
one stormy sullen day
and the barren rocky coast
was suddenly recast
as a natural history museum.
A whale.
A real whale, just lying there
shining on the shale
In another time,
we'd have known how to react.
This astonishing bounty
would have been quickly stripped
Bones for building
baleen for support
blubber and oil for fuel.
But now it lay
surrounded by detritus
made of better stuff.
The truth was,
we didn't really need it,
couldn't really use it,
like being presented with
Casablanca on VHS.
A sign appeared:
"Quad bike rides, £2",
red paint on rainsoaked cardboard.
I wasn't tempted.
Children poked it with sticks
in a desultory way,
stricken, intrigued, ashamed,
and utterly dwarfed.
The weeks passed
as we coughed in embarrassment
not knowing what to do,
until finally
someone brought a digger down
and discretely buried the beast.
By now, it will be a perfect skeleton
a prehistoric wonder
an artefact from unjaded days
when nature could still astonish,
trampled by unknowing tourists
as they dream of sunnier beaches.
Jan 1, 2012
Jan 1, 2012 at 3:06 PM UTC
The river runs dry
Choking on earthly pleasures
A flower grows out of light
----
Broken girl smiles
The sun reflects her shale tears
Bittersweet façade
----
******* and those hoes
**** around with Charlie Brown
Good grief, hard for pimps
----
Never to return
A dreamer's hope slightly worn
Decaying leaves burn
----
Waiting for the sleep
Eyes wider than horizons
Hazy with longing
Jun 16, 2013
Jun 16, 2013 at 3:29 AM UTC
In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.
2.6k
The photo reminded her of bruised fruit. Well first and foremost:fruit.
Her body, curled around itself, sheltering the fibrous crunchy pit of her, her body white and frayed looking, rounded buttock, calf gently sloping, feet modest, willowy toes toenails like shale
face blurred, questionable dark spots where her eyes could have been. they closed as the shudder buckled, her mouth sagged open, lip lolling to one side, brow ancient furrowed like folds of sand nudged by a lazy tide. None of it concise, only guessing. Her knees brought up, squeezed against small
crunch-able chest. Full, heavy with pulp (stringy sweet, what snags on the teeth) but what if it were to fall from an appreciable height? Filmy is the flesh. Daring the looker to look closer, see what mite be hidden there.
Ripe:questionable. Sweet like nothing, pouring from the corners of a mouth: what a bite it would be.
That first bite.
The bruising comes in when she thinks of the brain beneath, that open, limitless figure so pale and forefront and brimming with intent, so crush-able with careless fist, so lovable with thirsty mouth. But what of the mind that put her before you, that turned her vulnerable, shameless, open for discussion?
Put her before you. naked.
Feb 2, 2010
Feb 2, 2010 at 1:01 PM UTC
For the girl who used the umbrella as a walking stick,
this is for you.
No limp and leg slide followed your wake
just the upright roar of footsteps on pale shale-
Cambridge cotton stones that reflect and reverberate
the sound from around into the ears of the passerby.
I cannot wait, nor hold it in,
the urge to scribble 11 numbers
onto parchment paper, old receipts or
or that wilted vapour notepad paper,
that nestles in the jeans.
If I had, then we’d be at a meal now- a dining experience
just for two.
22 numbers and one letter was written,
illegible and wrong.
I forgot which phone number worked
and forgot which one you could reach me on.
**A poem from the upcoming poetry pamphlet, published by http://www.coffeeshoppoems.com, entitled "Leather Clad Warriors", available soon for £3. That's only 300 pence.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 11:19 AM UTC
Eventually Rising
Like all the Rest
I'm tired
Alone with everyone else
Although this misery
is like water on my Soul umbrella
I can hear the sound of victory
careening beyond oppression like Ella
There is something more
there is a force
ebbing and waxing the hour
of the instant and within it
a porous
Avenue for Advancement for
All, and One!
The buzzards may circle
pecking order, and peace
Only the rancor resource the feast
Why does conservation fail,
nature of the beast
or shale we sell
Gears without the grease
Landlopers versus Land Merchants
and
Machines versus human beings
and
Change versus Stay the Same
and
Monopoly
and
Monotony
and
Unipolarity
and
Is ... IS
it
All worth bile?
Did you learn Private Pyle!?
Yes Sir, General Science!
Sure!
Can't breathe a heartbeat
can't take a stand from a seat
and when the end is near
I promise you has no fear
Glass Rock and Stone!
Sure!
may hold money but not a home
Mother and Father Earth is our biome
billionaires and paupers rot together
yet alone!
Break
Who beholds the opulent eye?
Tell me who makes it out alive?
Believers in death will die
Those who weary tarry on
All the rest
eventually rise
Nov 20, 2015
Nov 20, 2015 at 7:51 PM UTC
RED barns and red heifers spot the green
grass circles around Omaha-the farmers
haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese.
Shale hogbacks across the river at Council
Bluffs-and shanties hang by an eyelash to
the hill slants back around Omaha.
A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and
Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River.
Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
Eats and swears from a ***** face.
Omaha works to get the world a breakfast.
2.2k
I found you
lone brick, of a million, one part of a mortared whole
your brothers now buried by time, without benediction
progeny of clay, shale, you were born in a kiln as hot as all creation
dragged to this plain by spoked wheel and mule--sweat of the honest illiterate
long before the dusters blew the crops to hell, and Tom Joad's kin to the promised land
the mason who laid you in a proud straight row is now in the ground too
not a mile from you, where the county put him the hot Friday a man set foot on the moon
the bricklayer’s days with the trowel long past, his memories of you, your place in all weathers interred with him
I found you , and you are the man’s legacy, he yours
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 4:09 PM UTC
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
Thaw
Today I cause erosion
I angle sand once perpendicular
to a half frozen lake
to a beachy slide
softened with shells
with starfish three hundred
miles away in an ocean
warm as the lips of a moray.
Earth stills below me
ten percent snow
thirty percent mud
fifty nine dirt
and one percent soles.
I carry a stick
I drag through earth
like a rudder through waves
and a clearing I swear
looks like it once
housed a UFO.
Remember the summer
in a three foot grass field
we used plywood and a rope
to make crop circles
that nobody would ever see
and had a fire
next to a creek and listened to water
scratch and sniff the shale.
Mar 15, 2011
Mar 15, 2011 at 9:57 PM UTC
*/
Thou Create Spaces
Within Thou
Barren Fields
Garden
It is born
Many trees
Flowers
Fruits
And do Thou
A mistake,
When thou plucks
The Flower
From the tree
The lesson of
Nature
Moves you to
Open Sky
Into the waves
Of Sea
Into the Black Shale
Of Paleozoic
Ripples
And reach the
Thoughts
In the home
Of Star
Now thou have
Learned
To count Stars
Move to
Get beyond,
Of which
May be found
The Edge
Of the Spaces
One Day
/*
@ Musfiq us shaleheen
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 1:34 PM UTC
Gray eyes
Sometimes blue
Sometimes green
Mostly slate, no phyllite
Sometimes schist
And sometimes, when all other hope is gone
Shale
Crooked nose
Broken, bloodied
Put a band-aid on it
It's still proud
Proof of heritage and blood
High cheekbones
Finely sculpted
Match the proud nose
Thin lips
Pink, not red
Set in a straight line
Seldom smiling
Sometimes laughing
Broad shoulders
Strong arms
A chest that contains a heavy heart
Pianists fingers
Long and slender
Nimble
Quick
Bound by a ring on the left hand
Scars
Powerful legs
Sprinters feet
Bad knees
Scars
Things in between
Head and feet
Don't quite belong
But over time
Are no longer noticed
See the soul
Not the body
Live happily
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 1:13 PM UTC
I remember so much and yet so little of that day,
I remember the woods near our home where I would used to play.
The den I made, smothered by oak and fern,
The dragonflies sailing zephyrs and their power that I yearned.
I remember clearer the presence of my father,
Struggling through gaps he was far to large for,
His smile strangely absent that day.
I remember words he whispered
"come child, today we are away."
Those words mean little now
So much more than they did back then,
When my mind idled with dragonflies
Locked in that wooden den.
I remember seeing the earth
Looking still, if not serene.
Defiant in it's rotation.
As countless ships,
Starward monoliths
Depart with naive expectation.
Some decided to stay,
As some always do.
The rest sail for space in search of silent refuge.
Once more we forgot ourselves
Embracing our own foolish divinity.
Forgetting the folly of our past
As it echoes unto infinity.
I remember once, now gazing at alien constellations,
The lines we drew in shale and sand to mark our different nations.
The pettiness we adored and the diplomacy we abhorred,
We burnt the earth behind us
And fled unto the stars.
The last thing I remember,
That day in late September,
The last solar systems' ember
Was the rusting glow of Mars.
I forgot how much I missed that home
Over the twelve cold years in space alone.
This place is not so bad,
But the trees weep strange,
Leaves drooped and sad.
From my window I see my grandson run
Chasing the shadows of new earth's twinned suns.
Fresh from the forrest
A new found den.
A second chance
Don't
Fail again.
Apr 8, 2012
Apr 8, 2012 at 6:11 PM UTC
After two weeks of fracking shale,
We needed to unwind. So we
went down to the Black Hawk
in search of a real good time.
My Buds picked up some “Ladies”
and they disappeared up stairs.
I sat down to play poker
at the gaming tables there.
An old guy sat across from me,
gin and tonic on his mind.
Two guys who looked like brothers
were seated side by side..
I had a decent pile of chips,
(I’m paid well for my time.)
I’m also a pretty fair player
and lady luck seemed on my side.
My pile of chips kept growing
as blue twilight turned to dark.
The old guy at my table pulled
at his tie in search of air.
He started going faint and pale
as he slid down off his chair..
I leapt up in a panic and
raced to the old guys side.
No one else in the casino seemed
to care if he lived or died.
I grabbed my phone, dialed
Nine- one- one and told him
to hold on. But when the
E.M.T’s arrived, the poor old
man was gone.
It was then I saw my pile
of chips was vanished
from my place.
Of those two brothers
who sat in with us
I couldn’t find a trace.
A girl smiled sadly
at my plight
as people often will
whenever age and treachery
Trumps over
youth and skill
Nov 13, 2011
Nov 13, 2011 at 10:07 AM UTC
You once shall meet me,
In many forms come I.
A creeping knife, an ominous pall,
A particle in your dense sky.
I play music, you see.
But, this music isn't pleasant.
It combines every element of malice.
Chains and whips ravage your ****** drums,
And I take you in.
You fall to your knees, and your eyes burst from pressure.
I keep playing mine tune on mine horrid instrument.
The aria of the Antichrist is formed into a choir, of the demons and Malakai, Loki and Lucifer.
The screeching is played too fast for your eardrums. They rupture.
Suddenly, the crease of reality breaks.
You are ****** into a shale-colored vortex, never to be again; listening to the wretched howl of the demons below.
You once met me,
In many forms came I.
I felt pity for you, and played you a soft tune,
But you only heard screeching while you died.
Jun 17, 2010
Jun 17, 2010 at 6:29 PM UTC