"sickles" poems
In India pongal is the best festival
It is not a mere ritual
We celebrate it in January
It is very very customary
It lasts for three days
Bhogi,sankranti and kanuma are the days.
On the first day we have a holy bath
Thinking that it sets us on the right path
Early in the morning we sit around the bhogi fire
Thinking it is the demon Ravana’s pyre
We put on a new and attractive attire
Dreaming life is a joyful boat shire
Children make wreaths of cowdung
Throw them into the fire like a gold ring
The villages are full of colourful bullocks
We sing folk songs taking neem sticks
The bride groom leaves for the mother-in-law’s house
The bride waits for him wearing a new saree and a blouse
Father-in-law gives the groom a costly gift
Mother-in-law makes a sumptuous feast
Younger sister-in-law teases the groom
The bride and the groom confine to the room
Mother prepares delicious dishes and pickles
Father goes to the farm worshipping the sickles
On the last day we go to the temple fair
I hope I made the happy pongal very clear
Yours sincerely,
JVL NARASIMHA RAO
Dec 28, 2010
Dec 28, 2010 at 7:32 PM UTC
At the beginning the oldest man sat on the corner
of the garden wall by the road under a vast
walnut tree known to have been there always
he came back in the afternoon to the cave of shade
in his broad black hat black jacket the striped gray
wool trousers once worn only to church in winter
with a cane on either side resting against the stones
he said when your legs have gone all you can do
is to sit this way and be useless I believe God
he said that is what I am doing I am thinking
and things come to me now when nobody else knows them
he was visited by the dazzling of accidents the boy
who caught his hand in the trip hammer and it came out
like cigarette paper the man with both crushed legs
dangling and the woman murdered and his father the blacksmith
forging the iron fence to put around the place
out on the bare slope where she had fallen I could never
be the smith my father was as he always told me
I was good enough you know but I never had
the taste needed for scythe blades sickles kitchen knives
we preferred to use carriage springs to make them from
in the forge outside the barn there and his were sought after
oh when he had sold all he took to the fair the others
could begin I still have the die for stamping the name
of the village in the blade at the end so you could be sure
10.1k
Crisp, the fallen leaves now pile,
the times are changing, Autumn-style,
breezes rake the tippy-tops of trees,
bare branches rattle like skeleton keys.
Subtle September has come once again,
tipping its hat to the Summer's end,
makes clear and crisp the evening air,
the harvest season now sidles near,
grass and weeds will wither dry,
scythes and sickles swing low and high,
gourds of pumpkins soon will burst in patches,
fat apples drop down cider-press hatches,
so soon those sugary coats of frost shall rise,
and sharp, chilly winds will sting teary eyes,
fruit pies will bake, brown nuts will roast,
glasses of wine shall arise in toasts,
to the approach of yet another Fall,
before the stark-white of Winter blankets all.
Sep 11, 2010
Sep 11, 2010 at 6:25 AM UTC
My community is like a day at the beach.
The warm water melts away the ****** seagull calls
As we build sandcastles large enough for the biggest
And most ridiculously hard to say umbrella that we can
Manage to stitch together from our broken homes.
We play volleyball with our hope
The biggest beach ball we can muster
Our net constructed of ally weave
And it’s got flames and it’s super bad-ass and ****
But nets are only nets
And nets can only do so much
You can’t play games without
The people.
We ride jet skis away from sharks
Sharing the strong towers
Of our middle fingers
Because **** sharks
I know only some of them are dangerous
But after you see a body floating in the water
Like a buoyed tomb
It’s hard to forget the biting.
The net asked us once
Why we never have a funeral
I guessed that it didn’t realize that
We don’t have the time
To bury all the bodies
That’s like
Asking us to count the sand
Like telling us to collect the waves
Like begging us to dry an ocean of tears
But
These aren’t tears
They are a body count
These aren’t sickles of sand
They are our ancestors’ ashes
These aren’t warm waves
but walls of black blood
And it’s here
Amongst the ashes
And blood
That we build our sandcastles
I look around in mine
It is insulated in white
The black blood
Only begins to broach
The moat outside
If I never bothered
To look
I might never see it
How much time
Must we spend in
Our sandcastles
Before we can
Smell the blood
Outside
How deep do we
Have to dig our holes
Before we silence the screams
Outside
Why are we just
Looking at the walls
Why aren’t we looking
Outside
We are not royalty
We are not arbiters of
Ash and blood
This is NOT a
Game
Net’s don’t matter when
All the players are dying.
How many sandcastles
Do we have to build
Before we remember
The stone riots that
Built them
Be spiked heel shoes
Be rock and brick
Be broken windows
Be shattered bone
Raise your fist against
The biting tide
Swim against the sharks
Until you bleed enough
To drown
Them
Be blood
Be ash
Be broken homes
Be ****** murals
In the street
Be white sandcastles
Then tear yourself down
Until you get back to the
Stone Walls of your foundation
You know what, ever mind
**** sandcastles
They seem too much like sharks
anyway
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 8:18 PM UTC
Lone seabird in a late dawning,
Sickles the gray rays of the sun,
Here on a ridge I can see aways,
Skerries, blasted by seas parade.
The moon fades as sun is rising,
My hair is groped in wind on fire,
In the late morning suns' glowing,
My breath uncatched as the wave.
Lone seabird in old sky forlorning,
Searches for a proud fish breaking,
In the frosts of broke tides trawling,
My heart sails above gusts keening.
Oct 16, 2015
Oct 16, 2015 at 4:12 AM UTC
This is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
No music nor rhythm
But of images
Of farmers exultant
Though they break their backs,
Or their bones creak,
With every slash of their sickles,
The heavy strokes
Wounding light in the fiery heat of noon,
The gaunt-faced sons of earth,
Bringing home harvests of gold
To the people's granary,
Where no greedy landlords are in sight.
For centuries, the land robbers
Had squeezed their souls dry
In constant toil.
It may be that their time is up.
But this is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
But of history
Of workers milling around a lingering twilight.
Pounding their hammers with their might,
Ecstatic at the thought of freedom,
Yet battling still, long dreaded ills
Of feudal ******* barratry,
Imperialism
Storing up for the people’s cause,
Building a new commune in the new place
Freed from the landlord-minded President
From the imperialist ogres
Of IMF-World Bank and Uncle Sam,
The warmongers,
From oppression
And poverty and wretchedness
That, like a python, had wound
Around them to the end.
But this is no love poem
No love, no art work, no poem
No fictive tale but of radiant truth.
As throngs of men
And women march
Out of their homes
With new-found hope,
Gathering strength
As from a blasting storm,
Defiant now of lying saints or heroes
Or of murderer Presidents
Who speak with forked tongues,
As the throng march out into the streets
Flooding the cities,
Ready to offer their lives for freedom
To them would come such happiness,
Such love
No poem would express,
No art suffice to render.
This is no love poem
No piece of art, no song
Only a sense
Of how it is to tell of battles won,
Of folding in to feel the surge of triumph
Though brief perhaps,
Within this flashpoint moment
Of the people's war.
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 6:24 AM UTC
5 am in mid July
and the sun is raising
golden trails in sky
and in the pools, following the
golden signet's flaming
vapour trails which, in polka-
dotted summer spawn, calm
the water's satin, rippled peaks.
Subsiding and gliding
into the stillness of emerald pond.
The signets move to the glistening
side of the river bank,
shafts of light catching
the lens forging ghostly
golden sickles
which lengthen
amongst the dust hovering
aglow above silver cove
and English lagoon.
May 9, 2014
May 9, 2014 at 3:39 PM UTC
He told his sister to feed the dogs,
His twin sister; Sophia Bogvoskya,
As he was to take out the herds
Of horses, sheep, donkeys and cows,
Out to the plains and hill land for grazing,
She never took a **** she locked herself,
Up in the ante chamber of the main house,
She took the mirror and began looking
At her beauty, Russian model beauty
She began picking her nails,
As the dogs were starving in the sheds
They whined but no succor came forth,
A fiat that coincided with arrival of ogres,
The great Western Ogres, the tongues wagging,
They had a plethora of eyes and mouths,
Noses and ears, limbs both hind and fore,
They ate all the young sheep,
They took away Putin’s young brothers
Crimea and Ukrainian, both were taken away,
By the ferocious NATO ogres they were taken
In a whelp and desperate kicking for freedom,
Dogs stood aloof as ogres thrashed Sophia
Into thin lacerations of red flesh,
They ate as they roared with laughter,
Then they went away with their loot,
Vladimir came back home, found nothing
No sister, no brothers no sheeplings,
Only two white sepulchers glared at him,
The graves of his mother and father;
The former cooks of Lenin Vladimir,
He mourned and mourned grievously,
Then he sang a dirge of his forefathers
From the herculean land of Bosnia,
And also Moscow, he dirged;
We were born in the wee of the night,
When the bear is whelping,
And we were suckled by the Tigre
When our mothers were taken slaves,
For no man or creature
Will ever make us victims
Nor subjects of fear,
He recovered from the moment
Trial some moment of loss and bereave,
Then he chose to go after the ogres
But with a strategum of no match,
He began arming himself first
Before he could set on,
His mobile armory full of deadly weapons;
A bunch of wasps, wild bees, black ants,
A thousand slings, spears and sickles,
Machetes, poisonous saps, and toxics,
Wild dogs, five hundred snakes and scorpions,
Bows and arrows as well as cudgels,
Clubs, stones and chains,
He also learned how to use the hands
In the most lethal manner,
Then he went for combat,
To rescue all that was taken,
Taken from him by the ogres….
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 8:38 AM UTC
Your Primrose blossomed in the Spring
frothy petals in the light flared
a brilliant hue your season to groom
I stitched a garland to pair
my green blades with your orbit,
blushing from your radiant glare
a satellite garnishing stray beams
My doting shadow, enfiladed
by the waxy glow of your stems,
entrenched around your lurid stalk
Vassal bands nestled below as
the sultry air bore your fragrance
to the tips of each driveling strand
Growing in your rendered space
light years from your radiant estate
milk weeds fawned at your feet,
but my encroaching shadow
and twining sickles
could not seal your comely face
In just a few days, the light
from your bright candle
flittered its last beam
your silky cheeks folded,
not from winter's cold stare
or the wind's shaking reins
Unencumbered by my embrace,
without flair or aplomb,
you cast your gilded parasol
to its shallow, un-dug grave
A decaying, still life brand
now shrouded my sodded feet
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 8:18 PM UTC
Leave me out in the dark
I'm not your playground of destruction
that you run to during your recess.
chiseling the grass,
sharp as sickles.
thrashing your leather whip
on the dusty ground
with an unerasable frown.
Strangling it around
the rusty bridles
of my broken swingset,
ripping it out from root down
at the twitch of your wrist.
Straddling my worn out see-saw
imbalanced by the wreckage of time
prance around until it
shatters into a million steel slivers,
While your hair brushes the clouds
while you have the first taste of rain
and feel the chill of snowflakes against your skin.
But this playground,
this zealous monument,
was built for
a higher purpose.
It's a place where
streams overflow,
wildflowers grow,
solace to the fireflies afterglow
& poetry readings during
seasons of snow.
If it does not stand for it's purpose,
my trembling hands will flick
a matchstick on the the wick of the trial
to arsonate it's submissiveness
and eat it's dispossessed soul.
It's flames will touch the
cradle of the crescent moon.
And from the ashes
I will rise,
***the Undying Light,
the Untouchable Night.***
Apr 3, 2016
Apr 3, 2016 at 1:52 AM UTC
=====================================
Silence broke into tears
But cried with authority of a heavy rain
With a prescription of a rule of the land
How many still write,
in autumn bells ?
when gentle dew sickles the nerves of my brain
tighten the bronchial tree of my chest
when your wings will broom the dust of the wound
behind the door of my aging heart ?
When the day will increase fresh greenery
Around the tiring garden of long passing life
And protect all the wedding stories
And save them for next generations and
Not allowing them to die
In a flooded storm of worldly intelligentsia ?
The dry leaves will remain burning
In the high temperature of June of My country
the serene calm river of wisdom will invite me drown
In Her depth up to the pebbles and sand
settled loosely in her breast flowing with deep water, but
The winter of coming life will try to frost my fertile brain
but the sacred heart reminds me to reach
the Ocean of the colored horizon
So I should be baptized or Initiated by the Guru
To follow the word of God or name of God
To know, realize and experience the hell or heaven of emotions
But, Some are so mature to become their own teacher
to write with their own pen on their own paper
Written by
~~~Jawahar Gupta~~~
Jul 20, 2017
Jul 20, 2017 at 2:54 PM UTC
There’s a silence out in the fields tonight
Where the barley sheaves are stooked,
Their shadows stand in a menacing line
While the wives at home are spooked,
They peer from windows, they peer from doors
And they lock their shutters tight,
There isn’t a man in the valley’s span
For they didn’t come home tonight.
They left their cottages there at dawn
As the sun was on the rise,
Wandered out with their ploughman’s lunch
And rubbed the sleep from their eyes,
They carried their sickles across their backs
Their ******* hooks and their flails,
And who could read took a crumpled book
To read with a half of ale.
They bent their backs to the task ahead
Of reaping the sheaves of grain,
The clouds were billowing overhead
And they said, ‘It looks like rain!’
The sun went in and the sun came out
As the shadows flitted across,
They stooked the sheaves at an angle so
The rain would drain from the crops.
The rain held off ‘til the afternoon
When the men were streaked with sweat,
They sheltered under the Sycamores,
Laid down their tools in the wet,
The wives were busily cleaning homes,
Preparing the worker’s tea,
They didn’t look out to the barley field
‘Til the sun dipped into the sea.
They didn’t look, it was almost dusk
When they noticed something wrong,
The men would usually come back home,
They’d hear them, singing a song,
A silence settled upon the land
And the wives came out to stare,
But nothing moved in the barley field,
The men were just not there.
Their faces white in the pale moonlight
The wives sat still, and stared,
The stooks were seeming to move about
And the women, they were scared,
The stooks lined up in the barley field
Like a pack of hooded ghouls,
And lying right in the midst of them
Was a heap of reaping tools.
There’s a silence out in the fields tonight
Where the barley sheaves are stooked,
Their shadows stand in a menacing line
While the wives at home are spooked,
They peer from windows, they peer from doors
And they lock their shutters tight,
There isn’t a man in the valley’s span
For they didn’t come home tonight.
David Lewis Paget
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 3:29 PM UTC
Oh pretender,
actions expose the weakness
as cold November slowly sickles
it's gangly fingers to your ribs.
your bitterness invites it in,
the ornate facade of skin
only hides the truth from yourself,
no one else.
Nov 6, 2012
Nov 6, 2012 at 9:34 PM UTC
Eyes as icy as my heart
Jagged sickles that slice into the pupil
So sharp and defined
They chip away at my barrier
And make me feel whole
Nov 17, 2014
Nov 17, 2014 at 5:05 PM UTC
I took a rose out of our neighbor’s garden;
A pretty thing to take your thoughts on past
The pain. You shift in bed, reveal your scars:
Red sickles in your skin. I’d hoped you’d laugh.
Outside, our own rose bush lays bare, the new
Rose petals torn and stamped into the dirt—
The thorns, stained red with drying blood, jut through
The tangled, shattered stems and upturned roots.
But I’m confused; you start to talk about
Your mother. “My own birth,” you cried, “was such
A mess! And now I have this child…” Get out,
Go to the garden, where snapped branches crunch—
I think of when we smashed the rose bush, thrilled;
How I emerged unscathed as your cuts spilled.
Feb 2, 2010
Feb 2, 2010 at 11:51 AM UTC
take it further than
blue jay blue jay
sunshine on a gloomy day
my goodness I'm a mess
took my thoughts on a
rip tide lawl ride
tongue tied n' fried and
I'm sighing sighs of silly songs
over sickly sickles sicking dogs
of love on rippling rainbows
step aside, ego!
i wanna see your shadow
summer's soon anywho
Mar 15, 2015
Mar 15, 2015 at 4:06 PM UTC
Where the tides of Magnus swell
And his thundering roars beat lightning to hell.
We've been living in a maze.
We've been digging up our graves.
We've been throwing up our brains,
Yet these quakes will still go on.
Sickles and hammers
And tall corporate buildings, portly businessmen.
The windows and towers they will smash because of the beast inside their heads.
Black and white
Good and evil
Are there two sides? Four, eight? Or are there billions of coloured pixels;
Each twinkling their own ideologies.
But once they blend, like watercolours,
The wars commence and their crimes they won't repent.
Our conditioned brains
Entertained by an electronic screen, or perhaps a print of lies on paper.
And we will curse, wail or put other opinions on bail.
Will we live a life of sepia, of black and white?
Or will we respect all sides of that rubix cube which becomes ever more difficult to solve.
The algorithms twist, intertwine, sever
But there is not one single lever- we can pull
to save our bleeding earth.
The quakes will go on
We will not have a break from them.
We are veterans of psychological corruption;
And our armour and weapons are destroyed.
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 10:39 AM UTC
BE AWARE OF THE COLD, ESPECIALLY, TO YOUR FEET. YOU CAN FIND THEM FREEZING, UNABLE TO WALK A BEAT.
BE AWARE OF THE COLD, ESPECIALLY, TO YOUR HANDS. THEY CAN FEEL LIKE POP SICKLES, AND ROUGH AS SAND.
BE AWARE OF THE COLD, ESPECIALLY, TOTHE NOSE. YOU MAY FEEL LIKE ROUDOLF, FROM YOUR HEAD, DOWN TO YOUR TOES.
BE AWARE OF THE COLD, ESPECIALLY, WHEN YOU CRY. AS THE TEARS RUN DOWN YOUR FACE, PLEASE REFUSE TO DIE.
BE AWARE OF THE COLD, ESPECIALLY, TO YOUR BONES. YOU NO LONGER HAVE ENERGY, YOU JUST WANT TO GO HOME.
BY, AUTHOR & POET, SANDRA JUANITA NAILING
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 12:11 AM UTC
Ain't a soul of us, without dark spots.
Not lacking
In don't's
That have been done,
In rues
Of arson -
Like
Matters
That, simply,
Will not go
Away.
--
Today,
I asked
A sweet birdy -
Just once-
If he would
Sing
'Til my
Dumb heavings
Shut up.
To hear how I
So needed
Him to say
Something beaming -
Something
That would melt ice
That had begun
Its branding -
Ignorant,
It went on,
Pecking rocks
At my toes.
So, I stapled
My bad day
To its back.
Head hot, in
Black heat,
Quick,
Shufflings of feet,
Sent the birdy
On its
Forced agenda.
Then, I saw
That sweet birdy
Get snatched,
By a beast
Thrice rabid,
On its way
To attempt such a feat.
Dry sickles
Burned my throat -
Some ugly and sad -
With broad cries
That never met
Words.
Though,
The sickles rose far,
Burned that ice
Into scars -
So, I guess,
The bird did away
With my blizzard.
Jul 31, 2011
Jul 31, 2011 at 8:12 PM UTC
Night's young. Sip on the pabst.
Smear the make up on your eyes.
Sickles mimic the cynical guest who won't roll the dice.
Sections of their throats, swollen from choking on opinion.
Go unwind,....
Apr 22, 2013
Apr 22, 2013 at 10:20 PM UTC
A C H T U N G
acht neun acht sechs vier fünf zwo
sechs drei eins fünf sieben acht null
the radio spews over and over again
void of meaning. or so they want
us to think as the concrete wall
keeps standing. they came to liberate us
which they did. of thought of speech
of word. see the ashen blocks sit
aren’t they pretty? as dark red blotches
stain their smooth surfaces like lipstick on
wine glasses. an old fan turns slowly
in a dusty room just south of
Leipzig. men dream of hazy Stalinist façades
as she brings a cigarette to her
rouged lips. Belomorkanal. the rusted olive uniform
pulls tighter as she draws in. octaves
bellow from the speakers. it is time
to hear from the homeland. how sickles
gleam for the Union just like they
did for Lenin. we don’t talk about
him now though. sickles don’t gleam here
like they ought to. the reels revolve
unforgiving to the cry of a winter’s
night. the ruby snow glints in torchlight.
the night goes on. it has to.
sieben sechs vier zwo neun drei sechs
eins sieben null sechs acht fünf sieben
E N D E
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 8:49 PM UTC
Up and up and open up
My doors are shut I wouldn't budge
so swallow locks but doorknob holes
to eat through bugs that can't disgruntle
and crashing mantle formed in gravel
Pushes digs bushes roots in deeper to
The thunderbrush tickles sordid sighs
Rubs sickles on distorted thighs
Leaves humble dries
I strives
Jan 5, 2015
Jan 5, 2015 at 2:38 AM UTC
What a fool I was
To let my heart play
The game of love
Mounting stress day by day
The winter chill freezes my resolve
Dousing the heated summer lust
Time sulks slower than ever
Replenishing glaciated rotten dust.
Incubus shield blocking the warmth out
Of the rays of light the sun bounces about
Winter's sickles stifling every route
Letting the tears while crying my heart out.
All for all with nullification for me.
It's getting harder to breath, harder to see.
My lonely soul cries for love you see
It's now in the game of love
Existing with a condemning glee
Frozen inside are the tears but wait,
A warmth may lift me to the light
And breathe the cooling breeze of life
Thus rescuing me from this frozen blight.
Dec 24, 2012
Dec 24, 2012 at 10:24 PM UTC
Sickles' corps had broken; the Rebels had them on the run.
Hancock foresaw disaster; perhaps a worse one than Bull Run
How could he plug the gap in the line and rally men to stand?
"What Regiment is this? " he asked of Colville, in command.
The First Minnesota volunteers- they were sorely undermanned.
They were Lincoln's first volunteers, staunch Union men in Blue
Hancock ordered them to charge; a death sentence, they knew.
With bayonets fixed they made their charge outnumbered twelve to Two.
The Rebel regiments were shocked, disbelieving what they saw;
The company sized regiment who'd come through three years of war.
Canister ripped through their lines; there was no time to weep.
Five minutes Hancock needed; for that long their grief would keep.
This field knows many heroes; so many fought and bled.
But let us pause and honor these brave Minnesota dead.
They bought time for the General; the Union held the Ridge.
We might not have a country had they not done what they did.
Apr 5, 2016
Apr 5, 2016 at 9:55 PM UTC
From the heart; the Heart deep high mountains lay frost
Laughter and song; Laughter the creatures sing a chant, ritual song
From the canyons; the Canyons of red as the tint of fall
Word of mouth; Mouth, echos the peaks of whitest snow
Crystals form as sickles and reflect the light of noon
New phase now repressing as the colors of the moon
Shadows respond in ominous stride
provoking the waters to musically drive
The whispering whistle of the the wind
travels through the pines like a soft spoken friend
Beauty; The Beauty to unearth a Godly quest
Travel now to the mountains, as child to mothers breast.
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 2:09 PM UTC