"shawl" poems
On flat bank’s where
grass runt reeds grow
waiting for rising tide,
A lone Heron stealths silently
while Gulls cry warning, and dive in to a cold sea air.
Phoenix Peanut and Pandora
stranded on wet mud bank,
wait for their chance to escape
but it’s bonds that need to be severed in their quest for freedom.
Estuary lights dim and flicker in the distance while closer to shore Mermaids sing on the breath of a storm.
Beckoning sailors "come ride the waves"
Siren songs of lost souls and shadows
“Come with us” on this bursting sea.
And they sing with a drowning charm
as fishermen launch vessels under a shawl covered wife's watchful eye.
And yesterdays widows weep, face rained bright from navigational lights.
Ships bell ring in time with a rollicking sea,
Pheonix Peanut and Pandora
still await their escape but not this night.
While the Heron has long fled this great swell.
No cries now from gulls nor mothers hurrying their little ones to the safety of their coal fired warm homes.
Just the rage of wave riding mermaids that will have their bounty
the heart and souls from a fisherman life.
Jul 18, 2018
Jul 18, 2018 at 9:34 AM UTC
I awoke as a tinder wolf
growling
a cut shawl man
dreaming of scarf’s
that left the world
drifting on infinite
dependency
I know I have
to wash
my human on
there are cigarettes
to be sung
could I be
a long shank man
a conqueror
or magician
No I am tinder wolf
howling,
hunting more
tobacco
Walking silent
forever
an assassin
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 10:33 AM UTC
Blue Monday
BY DIANE WAKOSKI
Blue of the heaps of beads poured into her breasts
and clacking together in her elbows;
blue of the silk
that covers lily-town at night;
blue of her teeth
that bite cold toast
and shatter on the streets;
blue of the dyed flower petals with gold stamens
hanging like tongues
over the fence of her dress
at the opera/opals clasped under her lips
and the moon breaking over her head a
gush of blood-red lizards.
Blue Monday. Monday at 3:00 and
Monday at 5. Monday at 7:30 and
Monday at 10:00. Monday passed under the rippling
California fountain. Monday alone
a shark in the cold blue waters.
You are dead: wound round like a paisley shawl.
I cannot shake you out of the sheets. Your name
is still wedged in every corner of the sofa.
Monday is the first of the week,
and I think of you all week.
I beg Monday not to come
so that I will not think of you
all week.
You paint my body blue. On the balcony
in the softy muddy night, you paint me
with bat wings and the crystal
the crystal
the crystal
the crystal in your arm cuts away
the night, folds back ebony whale skin
and my face, the blue of new rifles,
and my neck, the blue of Egypt,
and my ******* the blue of sand,
and my arms, bass-blue,
and my stomach, arsenic;
there is electricity dripping from me like cream;
there is love dripping from me I cannot use—like acacia or
jacaranda—fallen blue and gold flowers, crushed into the street.
Love passed me in a blue business suit
and fedora.
His glass cane, hollow and filled with
sharks and whales ...
He wore black
patent leather shoes
and had a mustache. His hair was so black
it was almost blue.
“Love,” I said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
“Mr. Love,” I said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said.
So I saw there was no use bothering him on the street
Love passed me on the street in a blue
business suit. He was a banker
I could tell.
So blue trains rush by in my sleep.
Blue herons fly overhead.
Blue paint cracks in my
arteries and sends titanium
floating into my bones.
Blue liquid pours down
my poisoned throat and blue veins
rip open my breast. Blue daggers tip
and are juggled on my palms.
Blue death lives in my fingernails.
If I could sing one last song
with water bubbling through my lips
I would sing with my throat torn open,
the blue jugular spouting that black shadow pulse,
and on my lips
I would balance volcanic rock
emptied out of my veins. At last
my children strained out
of my body. At last my blood
solidified and tumbling into the ocean.
It is blue.
It is blue.
It is blue.
Apr 13, 2015
Apr 13, 2015 at 7:31 AM UTC
She's planting out her window box
Young shoots are showing through
She thinks about the Springtime
And the garden she once knew
There were primroses and daffodils
Sweet violets white and blue
She thinks about her husband
And when their love was new
Buds and blooms open up
They scent and colour Summer long
She thinks about those happy days
When they were young and strong
Sunset's falling sooner now
Petals drop, the show is done
She gathers up her Winter shawl
Prepares for what’s to come
May 19, 2017
May 19, 2017 at 5:26 AM UTC
The black shawl-like quality
Of the nothingness
Wraps itself around everything.
A constant emptiness
That makes all full.
Its veins run blue
And gold and scarlet
And every hue between,
It dies as it arises.
The nothingness embraces all,
Easily, it encases me.
In everything and anything.
And that which I lack
I supplement with hope.
A chain mail lie linked
With fragile expectations
Of love and other drugs,
Other falsifications.
This tapestry holds whispers,
Secrets and blueprints
To all of creation.
Globes of dying light
That crash in the dark.
But alas I can see
Its stars are not cross'd
For me [cue tears],
I fear my script is lost.
Perhaps when the dopamine
Corrodes and rots my brain,
My soul will take the reins.
Connected to the cosmos
It tells me everything,
But yea, it shows me nothing
Except tantalising flashes
Of what could be,
In its swirls of red and azure.
Jul 24, 2017
Jul 24, 2017 at 7:17 PM UTC
It was only important
to smile and hold still,
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not to talk.
The black room took us
like a cave or a mouth
or an indoor belly.
I held my breath
and daddy was there,
his thumbs, his fat skull,
his teeth, his hair growing
like a field or a shawl.
I lay by the moss
of his skin until
it grew strange. My sisters
will never know that I fall
out of myself and pretend
that Allah will not see
how I hold my daddy
like an old stone tree.
6.9k
My hijab is a piece of imagination
a symbol of Islamic populism,
yet I get carried away by racists
misjudging my outer belief, only
for the sake of white extremists,
I cry and wet my birth certificate!
why am I a Muslim? Is it my choice?
I see a minute third-piece frame
down the lane-a sorrow to share,
it chokes my individuality- an insult
to my devotion for god, for life ;
yet, people have the time to call
us terrorists when they roam naked,
some pretending to be feminists
and lovers! Reality is a bitter piece
of chocolate melting away as time fades,
as it erodes the values we held before,
20th century is still marred by those
who wish to keep their history books
unfolded, un-kept and unstated;
a wish down the memory lane is needed
for it will awaken the senses of my fellow
brothers and sisters fighting over a shawl
covering my head!
I am curious and this curiosity is not a mere
joke, its the curiosity weaved into a cloth
hiding my sensitive and strong brain
from those “all-seeing” eyes around me,
pretending to expose my hair as if it was
something of utmost importance and value,
but friends, it’s nothing, it’s a trick
by those who seek to humiliate me and
my faith for god, and I am sure that this
will echo for the decades to come,
for me, a hijab is – “ a piece of head
covering worn by women of the world”;
and I am sure that our fight for the right
to wear something will reprimand
and will be carried out by my fellow
successors and those who shed light
to our cries and woes in this big world
of ours!
[AMEN]
Mar 11, 2017
Mar 11, 2017 at 12:53 AM UTC
kisses on your warm sweet mouth
tender lips caressed
exploring your ******* and raised ******* ..
belly and thighs enveloped
those eager dark delicious places that i covet so
your musk erogenous
the path to your hungry soul
eater of the poison apple
your eyes widen bright with delight
a strange synesthesia you say
your smile a hypnotic alter
you prone
back arched
belly willing
as i drag a curved blade slowly across your winsome flesh
worshiping you
breathing your warm breath into my mouth and nostrils
come now
you coo
i am sheildless
then little strangles that excite
to see how you do
will you love it
adorations twisted mind
she demon
a wizened dizzy Venus
please yes
her **** drenches the bed
a warm viscosity
legs widen
feet piqued
*****
exotic delicatessen
Heralded
i enter with long sweet butter strokes
the sabbath of desire
I swear
i wont let you suffer...
never !
why you say?
because i love you
lovely scythe you call
as if lulled to sleep
whispering dreadful incantations .
i ache to close the curtain
to lifes scalding chatter
wrap me
in a raggy shawl
impale the throat
like ive alway dreamed
a last exhalation
flood gates pour forth
as deaths dark fold
dissolves all
i rock you drugged
absinthe and wormwood
a last ***** of candles flame
white gauze cinched
lips on a lost mouth
eyes a static pyre
i linger
wishing you still plush
an animated glow
so that i could feel your arms,
now milky white relics
only to take you all over again and again and again
dreamer of the abyss
yet you stand
aberrations, smoke ghost
sacrificially swaying your hips
calling from Hades
dancer of ritual copulation
i melt like wax in the sun
wither
and die myself
marriage Italian style
dead bells in love
blotted out by the Sirens of Mara
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 4:45 PM UTC
1682
Summer begins to have the look
Peruser of enchanting Book
Reluctantly but sure perceives
A gain upon the backward leaves—
Autumn begins to be inferred
By millinery of the cloud
Or deeper color in the shawl
That wraps the everlasting hill.
The eye begins its avarice
A meditation chastens speech
Some Dyer of a distant tree
Resumes his gaudy industry.
Conclusion is the course of All
At most to be perennial
And then elude stability
Recalls to immortality.
5.4k
The trellis of oak trees winked,
captured my soul in a spinney,
chalked whispers of free promises
breathy like a silken shawl trailing
Those wise men of old, withered
skin of bark, tall and strong, waving
their introduction. They bowed to me
in free form, in humble escapism.
Sun had stroked their warm palms,
fed them sweet sap. To my left a
stray leaf, rested amid invisibility,
caught the air train, and spiralled free.
Twizzled to the green painted rug
basking under my cotton covered feet.
Reaching out, it blew away,
I chased the freedom fields.
The brook teased it and set
sail under the woody bridge,
green from seasonal tears.
Lost sight as it spun the space
between us. The grass sprung
its beginnings in full Spring, tall in parts,
summer not yet wrapped and
ready to visit us, much less
invited to the summer ball
where shadows are ten a penny,
and sunshine bought on every
street corner. I am among spring
devoured in daffodil eiderdowns,
elbowing out the crocus, snowdrop
chandeliers. I seagull my way,
swaying in step with willow, blossoming
surprising myself, how I let go of
school day shivers, tinkering my brain
into gear for terms talking tightness,
cramming commas, fat full stops.
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013 at 7:47 AM UTC
She pulled up her shawl and left the house
Gone to get more tea
And all the people passing by
And all the noises eating at her ear
Could not grasp her attention
Attending only to herself
Brilliant and Boisterous her thoughts
A majestic melody of their own
So how could she not be secure?
In her soul’s symphony
The strings vibrated her vessel
The horns heckled her heart
The drums beat down her darkness
And wisdom conducted alongside grace
Matching one another’s pace
Astute in one another’s ache
At conducting timelessly, never being late
It was almost as if their union was fate
Almost being key for it surely did take
Tireless effort, and sacrifices to make
The two into each other’s esteemed mate
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 9:46 AM UTC
*The leaves
Twist gold and red
and drift like butterflies
to earth, settling on crisp, cooled ground
A shawl*
Sep 19, 2010
Sep 19, 2010 at 10:21 PM UTC
It was the running wind
more than touched me
not so gently
slapping my face
pulling the hair over my face
making a wild disarray
dumping the shawl around my neck
to a muddy puddle nearby .
Like everything else it just passed
not even looking back at the mess it made on me
I ran my fingers though my hair
rearranged myself
moved on.
the wind did not seep in
through my skin.
©Malintha Perera 2014
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 2:03 AM UTC
1412
Shame is the shawl of Pink
In which we wrap the Soul
To keep it from infesting Eyes—
The elemental Veil
Which helpless Nature drops
When pushed upon a scene
Repugnant to her probity—
Shame is the tint divine.
4.1k
I
Our ****** dreams, all seedless in the light,
Of light and love the tempers of the heart,
Whack their boys' limbs,
And, winding-footed in their shawl and sheet,
Groom the dark brides, the widows of the night
Fold in their arms.
The shades of girls, all flavoured from their shrouds,
When sunlight goes are sundered from the worm,
The bones of men, the broken in their beds,
By midnight pulleys that unhouse the tomb.
II
In this our age the gunman and his moll
Two one-dimensional ghosts, love on a reel,
Strange to our solid eye,
And speak their midnight nothings as they swell;
When cameras shut they hurry to their hole
down in the yard of day.
They dance between their arclamps and our skull,
Impose their shots, showing the nights away;
We watch the show of shadows kiss or ****
Flavoured of celluloid give love the lie.
III
Which is the world? Of our two sleepings, which
Shall fall awake when cures and their itch
Raise up this red-eyed earth?
Pack off the shapes of daylight and their starch,
The sunny gentlemen, the Welshing rich,
Or drive the night-geared forth.
The photograph is married to the eye,
Grafts on its bride one-sided skins of truth;
The dream has ****** the sleeper of his faith
That shrouded men might marrow as they fly.
IV
This is the world; the lying likeness of
Our strips of stuff that tatter as we move
Loving and being loth;
The dream that kicks the buried from their sack
And lets their trash be honoured as the quick.
This is the world. Have faith.
For we shall be a shouter like the ****
Blowing the old dead back; our shots shall smack
The image from the plates;
And we shall be fit fellows for a life,
And who remains shall flower as they love,
Praise to our faring hearts.
3.7k
Last class:
Muddled mind and bleary eyed
Concentration took a fall
Find a hollow - crawl inside
Lost the pills to Now-Tow Hall
Benzos - always second choice
Wear my Kpen like a shawl
Want to whine with all my voice
GIVE ME BACK MY ADDERALL
This class:
**Iris in on what's inside
Orange bottle of enthrall
Guidance, I will not abide
my true love - oh adderall
Tweaking out with pupils wide
Shrink my presence, oh so small,
Temptations I will all abide
Personified a mere rag doll.**
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 8:31 AM UTC
Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
And what have ye there i' the basket?
Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy,
Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?
I love your meads, and I love your flowers,
And I love your junkets mainly,
But 'hind the door, I love kissing more,
O look not so disdainly!
I love your hills, and I love your dales,
And I love your flocks a-bleating;
But O, on the heather to lie together,
With both our hearts a-beating!
I'll put your basket all safe in a nook,
Your shawl I'll hang up on this willow,
And we will sigh in the daisy's eye,
And kiss on a grass-green pillow.
3.4k
Black dress,
Black lace shawl,
Red cherry violin,
Black frets and strings,
Black bow, white mane or tail,
Tensely poised
To move along the strings
In dances sensuously slow,
Tantalizing strings
To vibrations sublime,
Singing listeners to sway
Eyes closed, adrift, in
Streaming consciousness.
Other movements quick and sharp,
Impossible for any heavy-wielded harp,
Dancing pirouettes of sound,
Jetting needles sharp,
Then reeling tremulous...
These caterwaulings of a horse's tail
Held tautly on a stick.
A deaf man here beside me,
Only seeing, reads about
The music that I hearing, feel...
Somehow feels the Muse,
Sways to the dancing bow.
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 11:17 AM UTC
your words make me
ache as far as a torch
stretched between murky-
blank pages
do not wait to scrawl your
truths until heavy resignation
creeps over my head like
a dark shawl
do not wait -
- I miss
everything and nothing
and (god
**** it)
the philosopher was right in
assuming a search for completion
leads only to a sort of frustrated
compassionate silence,
so
tired of being tired of growing
weary with assumptions,
mad libs of the spirit, only
fill in the line with whatever
you dream might be,
no
let me know you, the real
uncensored and true
(I can love) you
I feel like a child being spelled at
to keep the F-I-L-I-B-U-S-T-E-R for
adult ears only but even though
I admit the fact
- I know next to nothing
my heart desperately
wishes to know
you, everything.
Apr 18, 2012
Apr 18, 2012 at 10:13 PM UTC
443
I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—
Life’s little duties do—precisely—
As the very least
Were infinite—to me—
I put new Blossoms in the Glass—
And throw the old—away—
I push a petal from my gown
That anchored there—I weigh
The time ’twill be till six o’clock
I have so much to do—
And yet—Existence—some way back—
Stopped—struck—my tickling—through—
We cannot put Ourself away
As a completed Man
Or Woman—When the Errand’s done
We came to Flesh—upon—
There may be—Miles on Miles of Nought—
Of Action—sicker far—
To simulate—is stinging work—
To cover what we are
From Science—and from Surgery—
Too Telescopic Eyes
To bear on us unshaded—
For their—sake—not for Ours—
’Twould start them—
We—could tremble—
But since we got a Bomb—
And held it in our *****
Nay—Hold it—it is calm—
Therefore—we do life’s labor—
Though life’s Reward—be done—
With scrupulous exactness—
To hold our Senses—on—
3k
The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand
That lay impounding the Pacific swell,
Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.
Lacustrine man had never been assailed
By such long-rolling opulent cataracts,
Unless Racine or Bossuet held the like.
He did not quail. A man who used to plumb
The multifarious heavens felt no awe
Before these visible, voluble delugings,
Which yet found means to set his simmering mind
Spinning and hissing with oracular
Notations of the wild, the ruinous waste,
Until the steeples of his city clanked and sprang
In an unburgherly apocalypse.
The doctor used his handkerchief and sighed.
3k
Seated beside you in a bicycle rickshaw,
eventide of your last New Delhi day
gathering itself all around us.
Silk from my sari encircles my head,
shoulders warmed by a winter shawl.
Your heavy beige mantle and dhoti,
frame a man as tall as a tree, at least to me.
There is no need for words.
I may have been singing a bhajan to you,
just quietly, as shop lights came on
in the deepening blue.
Perfection finds us in the briefest of moments.
Wherever you are now, timelessness
governs friendships formed
in the Land of the Veda.
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 2:32 PM UTC
Who, or why, or which, or what, Is the Akond of SWAT?
Is he tall or short, or dark or fair?
Does he sit on a stool or a sofa or a chair,
or SQUAT,
The Akond of Swat?
Is he wise or foolish, young or old?
Does he drink his soup and his coffee cold,
or HOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he sing or whistle, jabber or talk,
And when riding abroad does he gallop or walk
or TROT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he wear a turban, a fez, or a hat?
Does he sleep on a mattress, a bed, or a mat,
or COT,
The Akond of Swat?
When he writes a copy in round-hand size,
Does he cross his T's and finish his I's
with a DOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Can he write a letter concisely clear
Without a speck or a smudge or smear
or BLOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Do his people like him extremely well?
Or do they, whenever they can, rebel,
or PLOT,
At the Akond of Swat?
If he catches them then, either old or young,
Does he have them chopped in pieces or hung,
or SHOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Do his people **** in the lanes or park?
Or even at times, when days are dark,
GAROTTE,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he study the wants of his own dominion?
Or doesn't he care for public opinion
a JOT,
The Akond of Swat?
To amuse his mind do his people show him
Pictures, or any one's last new poem,
or WHAT,
For the Akond of Swat?
At night if he suddenly screams and wakes,
Do they bring him only a few small cakes,
or a LOT,
For the Akond of Swat?
Does he live on turnips, tea, or tripe?
Does he like his shawl to be marked with a stripe,
or a DOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he like to lie on his back in a boat
Like the lady who lived in that isle remote,
SHALLOTT,
The Akond of Swat?
Is he quiet, or always making a fuss?
Is his steward a Swiss or a Swede or Russ,
or a SCOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does like to sit by the calm blue wave?
Or to sleep and snore in a dark green cave,
or a GROTT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he drink small beer from a silver jug?
Or a bowl? or a glass? or a cup? or a mug?
or a ***
The Akond of Swat?
Does he beat his wife with a gold-topped pipe,
When she let the gooseberries grow too ripe,
or ROT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he wear a white tie when he dines with friends,
And tie it neat in a bow with ends,
or a KNOT.
The Akond of Swat?
Does he like new cream, and hate mince-pies?
When he looks at the sun does he wink his eyes,
or NOT,
The Akond of Swat?
Does he teach his subjects to roast and bake?
Does he sail about on an inland lake
in a YACHT,
The Akond of Swat?
Some one, or nobody, knows I wot
Who or which or why or what
Is the Akond of Swat?
3k