"sienna" poems
Words swathe me in calm,
Sentences, paragraphs that soothe.
Viridian verbs burst through the grey,
Taunting me into action-
Seducing me into a delicious dance-
Gypsy girl, swing your sentences my way!
Turquoise adjectives wrap around my wounds,
Embracing my flaws and perfections.
Rough olive skin; somber caesious eyes-
Gypsy girl, with amaranthine scars.
I drape myself over sienna nouns,
Steadfast, supporting me proper, improper, always.
Paper, songs, tree, sky, love, Jami Lee-
Gypsy girl, use your words correctly!
Each turn of a page lures me deeper-
Each spoken rhyme embraces me close-
Jami Lee, sweet little girl, get your head out of the clouds,
And your nose out of a book!
Oct 13, 2012
Oct 13, 2012 at 9:23 AM UTC
sienna cities
sparkling saturn sunrises
sangria skyscrapers
sublime.
you are kaleidoscoped
through and through
with window blinds, bed sheets,
and street signs.
they call you modern art
and hang you on a wall
of white
and beige.
your color bleeds.
you boil
and no *** can hold you.
you speak and
wind chimes cry,
ringing into the empty night,
morose.
a ballerina can only hope
to move as gracefully
as you do.
your eyes light up
like tuscan sun cities
sizzling sirius sunsets
school bus skyscrapers
divine.
i’m hooked on your city glow
brighter than tokyo.
Nov 15, 2018
Nov 15, 2018 at 1:46 PM UTC
i told you i loved you
in a violet sea
under a setting sky
a magnificent orange
kissed your cheeks
before i could do it myself
we were intertwined
and the youthful night
lied before us
covered in our own colors
our love was even more handsome
and stirred between us
we were blind to the others
and halfway drowned in burnt sienna
when the sun had gone
we filled the empty night
painting the earth
with the color of our love
Jan 24, 2018
Jan 24, 2018 at 2:23 PM UTC
Lay rest your flashing glaze of wishes
Down received for a moment
Breathy bow lifts to hold
and waver across few measures
Sienna and topaz
Sienna and topaz
Singe and simmer
Shine and glimmer against
All the thoughts born and dead
What makes you eager to rise
If it is not sensing gone away stories
or nursing the aches that lunge through anywhere else but here
While you replay and delay all creation
the blossoming goes unseen
She, the maiden is reigning
Une palais à remplir
Une palais à remplir
where she is her own queen
Her oceans made of no time channel open mouths
flooding its spill
She waded into The archer
Downed in his own vessel he mistook himself the pilot of
He, marooned in the surrender of damp and fertile places
where in Death he is still recovering
Soldiering and sullen
Soldiering and sullen
He is choking, and can not stop to see or savor the blossoms rising from his own till
Jan 5, 2022
Jan 5, 2022 at 9:03 PM UTC
A boy in jeans,
A boy in trousers,
A boy in braces,
A boy in blouses,
A girl who smells like summer sweat,
A girl whose makeup hasn’t set,
A boy who swears,
A boy who doesn’t,
A girl’s shoulder,
A second cousin,
A girl who smells of **** and beer,
A tattooed boy with a silver sneer,
A skinny girl who’s got T.B,
A boy who daintily sips his tea,
A girl’s left leg – bare or stockinged,
A boy so cold his knees are knocking,
A nasty ****
A suede-head killer,
Kate Moss,
Sienna Miller,
Vivienne Westwood’s crazy teeth,
Bow-legged loons on Hampstead Heath,
Blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, green,
Cold eyes, big eyes, sad eyes, mean,
Darling sweethearts in flirty skirts,
City-Boy ******** in well-pressed shirts,
Elbows, throat, wrists, knees,
A consumptive girl’s chainsmoking wheeze,
Blonde girls with their hair in plaits,
Skinny boys, short boys, muscular, fat –
Girls with pink lipstick like strawberry frosting,
I’m telling you man,
It’s ******* exhausting.
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 8:16 PM UTC
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
Though glass, it is rimmed with gold
around the cup, handle and even the
saucer. Skilfully painted chrysanthemums
of various shades; the vermilion horizon,
Spring's honey, songbird's magenta,
sangria's fine wine, a parakeet's breast
and the Aegean sea.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
And then, there are three sightly tea
caddies with lacquered wooden bodies;
one rosewood with red dancing fans,
one burr-oak with golden mountainous
landscape and one maple wood with
green bamboo. Ainhana gently removes
each of their lids by using the cloth, and
presents the pearls that were wrapped
in sun-kissed foil.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
She first lifts the rosewood caddy towards
me. I close my eyes and focus on the scent.
Without peeling back the foil, I know. It takes
me to the far distant Province of Yunnan,
past the snow-kissed mountains and rice
terraces to a very still lake. I noticed that
it began to bubble before a large splash
rose.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
At that moment, I meet the lake's Guardian,
the Imperial Wingless Dragon of legend.
With its wet emerald-kissed scales drinking
the sunlight. It's great body now entwined
in a wispy clouds as it stares at me with
eyes of liquid moons. Its tail crowned
with a peacock feathered eye-spot whips
around in the air, leaving an iridescent
trail of colours.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
With a great leap, he soars through
the air, trumpeting his great roar
that rattles the skies. Just as quickly
as he rose, he descends down with
a Pearl Moon in his brown claw. By
the stroke of its sienna-brown whisker,
the small Moon cracks, presenting me
it's contents, a long kept secret.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
The pearls are the colour of seaweed
with streaks of yellow and burnt umber.
With earthy notes whirls around my
nose, along with some floral sweetness,
burnt caramel licks, dragon spice and
a wisp of apricot. Ah, so I see! One great
guarded secret that he reveals to me!
His best pearls ferment in the womb
of the Moons! Purified by the Star
Virtues of Elysia's Harmony!
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
'Wonderfully rich Pu-erh Pearls,'
I say, my eyes now open.
'My Lady's nose is as sharp as ever!'
'I just know my tea,' I chuckle, 'it's
very unique in smell and taste. I will
save such fine broth for another day.'
Ainhana nods, places on the tray and
lift the burr-oak caddy. I close my
eyes once again and my mind
wanders yet again.
~ ⚘ ⚪ ⚘ ~
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 4:20 AM UTC
We lie amidst Ripe mountain herbs,
The nightingale has just begun its summer trill,
This hymn for golden vocal cords
Composed no owner of a writing quill
So sweet were melodies produced
That I mistook the front row lady’s cheap perfume
For blossoms, above which haunting hornets mused;
For an aroma of our Shakespeare love in bloom.
The serenading cardboard creatures –
Those thieve their voice from birds with no address.
Meanwhile a glass raised in a playhouse features
But colored water, as red as gipsy’s dress.
When the last spectator goes,
Having not found at least one genuine sun,
As actors, we recede into descending roles;
Electric blood in lamps’ capillaries feels numb.
A lovely ladybug, I doubt, I will ever catch,
A lifelike flower, dipped in a painting fusion:
All this, fine artists tenderly attach
To lifeless decorations, for aid they do us in a willful staged illusion.
Three burnt sienna pearls run down your spine
Yet after a big round of applause
These jewels are no longer signs of the divine,
But witches’ marks or, rather, unalluring flaws.
After the play I went to buy a notebook from my shopping list
To store the overgrowing verses, such as these;
A sheet of paper guarantees
To treat them like extinguishing bees
Cashiers ****** the change into my hand,
You purchased hothouse roses with;
And up those pretty useless beauties stand
In someone’s vase, whose name remains a myth.
They give me back those polished dimes
You traded for a pair of shoes.
I’ve seen you marshal through onstage lifetimes,
Yet to disclose personas’ traces the theater walls refuse.
Your chocolate hair has just fallen from the hairdresser’s hand,–
That’s how I know the summer’s coming to a bitter end.
Apr 6, 2019
Apr 6, 2019 at 7:02 PM UTC
*They say that
Van Gogh ate yellow paint
To put the happiness inside him.
But she, instead, would
Cut out the sadness from her skin
And let the hatred pour out
In gushing streams of red,
Her screams echoing
The injustice of colour.
Her wheat skin looked prettier, she thought,
With the raked furrows of half healed scars
And painful slurs
Etched into the deep ochre of her soul.
She quietly detested her terracotta skin,
Smooth like a polished stone
Picked up from the Ganges.
But here in the pale waters of the Thames
She was a blot of burnt sienna on an otherwise ivory white riverbank.
And every new cut
Would heal bloodless and waxen,
Which made her vow to herself to cut off her skin completely,
Leaving nothing but
The darkened red of her fury
And a frightened echo of a scream
In a room filled with bitter laughs and slurs,
In a room filled with the muffled cries of the oppressed and unheard.*
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM UTC
The under shell of
the tortoise looked
like a sunset.
Blasts of color:
orange, maroon, burnt sienna.
I caught them in
the garden at
sunrise, eating a
tomato or chewing into
a head of lettuce.
They always looked so
serious.
I was just a
sunburnt boy, with
cutoff jeans and a
straw hat.
I caught toads too.
But when they peed on me,
I let them go.
I loved that land.
Ponds and streams,
fishing and climbing trees.
oh,
sweet, green
youth.
Apr 29, 2023
Apr 29, 2023 at 11:44 AM UTC
"Have you ever sailed across an ocean, Donald? On a sail boat surrounded by sea with no land in sight. Without even the possibility of sighting land for days to come. To stand at the helm of your destiny. I want that, one more time. I want to be in the Piazza Del Campo in Sienna. To feel the surge as ten race horses go thundering by. I want another meal in Paris, at L'Ambroisie in the Place Des Vosges. I want another bottle of wine. And then another. I want the warmth of a women in the cool set of sheets. One more night of jazz at the Vanguard. I want to stand on summits and smoke cubans and feel the sun on my face for as long as I can. Walk on the wall again. Climb the tower. Ride the river. Stare at the frescoes. I want to sit in the garden and read one more good book. Most of all I want to sleep. I want to sleep like I slept when I was a boy. Give me that. Just one time. That's why I won't allow that punk out there to get the best of me, let alone the last of me."
Aug 24, 2014
Aug 24, 2014 at 6:25 AM UTC
Sable, the swallow rising
as it banks over the white conduits
of marrow in the body, rain
slashes through the honey locust,
along the long ellipse of its hunt
as savage dragonflies rise from stems
to cling, a deep sienna of doeskin tremors
over their sting, catkins,
an aftermath, melancholy to the skin
soaked in white calla,
its reticence assails
the sleeping orchards of the heart,
in its darkest sheaves,
to cleave apart the soft joining of lips
and silence me;
for eternity
is this moment,
and the light you give
cloaks me in a coat of flames,
the burnt locust of slaughter, taunt
the rubric of Christs hidden scriptures,
as I night,
the body, solely a vessel
of shadow, returning
through a field of windfall,
ripe with wasps,
echo you
in me,
a dream of a dream dream't,
in the dim recess of light
your lips close
like a sutra over mine,
a brutality of moments
ground out of thick pine,
as the fine agony
of cricket ballets rise
shivering, to stillness,
this silence is a lotus,
a blue psalm,
throttles the throat,
as a quorum of swallows
gather between the swathes
of sunlight and skewed shadows,
and lift as one body, subsumed
by our abandoned depths,
out of exile, you
have made me a homeland
of truant light and as I night,
lightning opens like scripture,
a black plea, poured over some sore refuge,
and so that I may never be restored,
cloak me in a coat of flames,
suffering an ecstasy of moments hardened in amber,
over the white conduits of marrow
in the savage body, writhe
a black throng of swallows,
assail the sleeping orchards of the heart,
in its darkest sheaves, to cleave
apart the soft joining of lips
and silence me....
Dec 4, 2012
Dec 4, 2012 at 4:05 PM UTC
Naples yellow
Prussian blue
Burnt umber
Cadmium Red Deep
Napthol Red
Quinacridone
Phtalocionine Blue and Green
Portrait Pink Light
Yellow Oxide
Raw Sienna
Can you make a painting without these?
Aug 16, 2018
Aug 16, 2018 at 5:29 PM UTC
I waved goodbye to the oak tree
And felt the cool breeze surround me
Looked up to the multicoloured sunset
And down to the assortment of sienna leaves
Nov 8, 2018
Nov 8, 2018 at 7:24 PM UTC
The woods felt peaceful
Alas, they hung in a rhythm
we breathe
The trees swayed high above
Mighty silhouettes
calling down to me.
My eyes traced
the streaks in the sky
From eastern pink
to the blaze in the west
Earth was blushing rosy cotton
Fierce in her burnt sienna dress.
Earth was me
swirling with the elements
Wind was me
finding the love in the twist
Wells were the arms of melancholy
Fire was the heat
erupting from my chest.
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019 at 9:54 AM UTC
From the Azul sky a diving sparkling speck,
An unmatched beautiful creature without circumspect,
The golden leaves of spring like soldiers on parade,
Dip and make way for this fair winged maid.
I have so much longed to be first bite of this season,
To be touched and blossomed to perfection by your reason,
I grow juicy, soft and ripen as I fall for you.
Tumbling into your soft Cashmere hands on cue.
Salivating, I’m tasty, savour me between your teeth,
Sink deep in without remorse, how delectably indiscrete!
Say my name with a smile it’s so safe in your mouth.
I’m tingling the roof of your brain with my flavours coming out.
Take me away! as we fly, I’m cast about like an enchanted spell,
Moistening your soft syrupy lips of caramel.
I’m drained to sustain the iridescent colours of your gilded wings,
Moved by the high passionate notes as you sing.
Your smooth, probing tongue, my flesh diabetically sweet,
Leaving streaks of sienna nectar on fates smeared cheeks,
Wipe away before staining fabric from our black and white lives.
They keep returning, stubborn like long goodbyes.
Surprise! New emotions enveloping, hypnotic like Night Jasmine,
Mimicking a rainwater spout so bubbly, escaping, and exciting!
Your caught hopeless as a fish fly rod with a glass eyed trout
Choking while love swoops silent from heaven to pluck it out.
That’s when you look at my seed and you can tell.
I’m good for your ego but as bad as a toadstool’s spell.
So I’m placed in the first mound of mud you come across,
Where you replant me sprinkled with fairy dust.
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 5:58 PM UTC
Don't sleep
Don't sleep
I begin to
Like you
A little bit more
I shift and sigh
Say your name
Fatigue rolls
Somewhere by
But, alert I
Imagine
So many paintings
To make for you
You mumble
Childishly
Your laughter
Is glittery
I wish
For so little
I wish too
Intensely
Dont wipe me
With a stiffened cloth
Soaked
In turpentine
And a hundred hues
Dont stir me
I might be disturbed
Out of skill
Out of thought
Onto a burlap scene
Grotesque
Picturesque
And so, so true
Don't move
Or I might too
I might too
Become a facet
Among the facets
Of your horrors
I might
Become art
Might become
Beautiful
In that strange
Black way
Of art
Dont sleep
Talk to me
Speak to me
Let us be
Normalities
Let us
Hold
Technicalities
Forget
Sentimentality
In the silly blue painting
Of an eyeless pretty
Smooth and porcelain
Perfectly closed
No night
To mourn into
Dissolve into
To stumble,
To tremble into
Don't sleep
I become too much alone
Shrivel, burnt sienna
I cannot move alone
I become the paintings
That I fear to paint
I become the sombre
Debris of your laughter
Cold, blue
Featureless
A moonlit night
Nothing but red
You don't know
That I like you
In my head
Come back
Come back
Apr 30, 2023
Apr 30, 2023 at 6:10 PM UTC
*in purple haze of reverie, the gentle visitor came
beckoning kindly…come, come to
our V I R I D I A N world* . . .
1.
On our cerulean sphere
You need have no query, nor fear
We open our non-gravity planet to guests
Even unlikely earthlings who pass the simplest flaxen-test.
2.
Much less needed, we bedaub
Our flavescent lava-vision, going beyond the orb
Mild kaleidoscopic fandango-swirls is our mossy cyan-matter
Triplet-hue colours felt only by the revered and well-known mad Hatter.
3.
To let you in on the cosmic-latte ripple
Our flowers range from acid-green to African purple
Blast-off bronze flora dance-blaze in burnt sienna fields
Alabama crimson rocks and aureolin skies over anti-flash white seas.
4.
We confabul8 with deer, breezes, plumes
Such creatures roam free, for we do not consume
As slumber befalls us not, you wonder how we spend time
Frolic in universal peace; to welcome home stars as our rhyme.
*you are so welcomed, celestial guest
Vortexiamus awaits
only
you*
S T, 28 july 2013
Jul 27, 2013
Jul 27, 2013 at 5:50 PM UTC
Sun feigns heat
in a clear slate of blue above;
I gaze upon pale, brown hills and fields
through the smoke of my breath
wishing it would at least snow.
There was talk of cow-tipping
when I was in fifth grade,
but cows would've broken their necks.
Ground covered in frozen grass
is no comfort for fallen cows at 15 Fahrenheit.
Our small lake
transformed into a debating ground for skaters and hockey players,
each vying for control over the weekend's
primary source of entertainment.
(The dreadful alternative: afternoons shopping with parents.)
When it finally snowed, a wonderland was made,
a knee-high, get-out-of-school-free card.
We charted expeditions in corn fields, wooded creeks
and stone-colored barns that were beguiling in the white
of Chadds Ford pastures like untended English castles.
Woods like a Pollack of burnt sienna and white,
their only sound is weight of snow bearing down on limb.
Beyond those whispers, just a roaring silence
when I'm still as ice fingers
trying to touch the ground from the roof.
The cats of Baldwin's Book Barn nap easily within,
as we dig for a pearl amongst makeshift shelves
full of hard-bound reads for snow-bound youth.
These felines, grown, need not the words,
but the pages themselves for fine beds.
A blue-white glow from outside casts a cold light,
illuminating prints of Helga and Christina's World,
a reminder to all who live down the road.
On such a winter day, I didn't care to remember
that soon there would be Spring kittens in the books,
and a lake full of children's swimsuits.
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 8:16 PM UTC
He had his own scent
His own type of aura
It came off like clouds of dust
From within his skin, burnt sienna
He had something shiny there
Some kind of hazy dream
But if I ever asked about it
He'd say it's not what it seems
You see, my daddy was a smoking man
But I didn't know quite yet
The meaning of that phrase
Not to its full extent
I was intrigued with his eyes
And the way he spoke
I would watch forms shape
From thick, grey, and poisonous smoke
He had something earthy there
Wrapped in some tin foil
He would rub it in his hands
And trade cash for his spoils
You see, my daddy was a merchant man
I learned that on a cold night
Sitting alone in his rusty jeep
When the other men wanted to fight
My daddy looked to me
Telling me to look away
Maybe, I should have listened
It was took late anyway
An explosion sounded
It's echo ringing in my ear
My daddy on the ground
Convulsing in fear
Screaming, someone was screaming
I stop to listen
And realize it was me
My feet were moving
And I was there next to him
Trying to stop the blood
That was covering my skin
He had a look on his face
Like he was trying to explain
But every time he tried to speak
He didn't know what to say
He had some kind of waste there
The wind had scattered all around
He was too deep in this world
No way else to fall down
You see, my daddy was a smoking man
Right down to his core
Couldn't see past the nightmares
To get off of the floor
He got lost in his hazy dreams
Somehow the pain would ease
You see, my daddy was a merchant man
But he let himself get burned
He risked everything he had
And got nothing in return
He took chances with gunshot wounds
Had some silly notion he was immune
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 7:11 PM UTC
i see things in high definition colour, but
july is the only month that fluctuates—
between florida orange and, later, burnt sienna;
everything between the 1st to the 31st
is dipped in a honey-glaze of three things:
1. warm, sticky air
2. the feeling of 6pm
3. bicycles riding through fields of fireflies.
naturally, i spend most of july in my bedroom—
the heat gets to me, makes my allergies flare
and i watch movies; old, 80s, movies (or—tiktok clips
of the same movie, only broken up into thirty-six parts
that i view from my bed with my naked legs spinning vertical circles through the air).
i always forget the feeling of august
until it’s there again. july
overshadows it with the final embers, so i only realise
it's august on maybe the 5th or 6th. almost
a full week into a month that my brain—
which is never wrong about the way things feel—
sees a deep, ocean blue.
i don't write home about august. i don't hurry it up
through winter months, when i begin the countdown
to hot, hazy days. if anything, i view august
as the ending of something, of a summer i wished so hard for.
and every time, it blindsides me with love.
i love things more in august. i love the smell of summer-
rain on the pavement. i love songs i listened to in january.
i love waiting around for halloween. i love my bedroom,
the pause of heat-sick sleep, the blue-sky mornings.
i write love letters to autumn in a time capsule. i text july and ask u up?, and wyd?, and come over?
and still, when summer ends, i will never want to get what i wish for.
Aug 15, 2022
Aug 15, 2022 at 6:34 PM UTC
Gunga peas calypso
Madly
in my cooking ***
gradually I pour canned coconut milk
into the swirling flavors
of cilantro, garlic and onions
Staring into the rich brown
stew
I can see my Mother grating
coconut meat and hand squeezing
the milk like teats from a cow
(Too much work for me)
creating a traditional coconut rice and peas
dish
She was raised on a farm in St. Elizabeth,
Jamaica
early hours, rugged, hard labor were natural
for the family which included nine siblings
Pauline was a kind big hearted Soul
with ample soft *****
perfect for children
to lay their heads upon
and skin that always seemed
to smell of curry
Burnt sienna Indian complexion
wavy black river hair
and colorful patois accent
painted a portrait
cavorting over the dandy, rolling
goat hooved hills of
Jamaican village peasantry
The Moravian church of England formed
beliefs woven inextricably through
the fabric of her simplistic
innocent existence
our Mom instilled a love of
God in us that was pure and hearty
"Sonya stop your daydreaming"
my Mother's clarion voice interrupts
my avid reverie
"Bumba!" I cry aloud
"I haven't had bammy in eons"
Quickly my fingers Google
Another tasty native recipe
chock full of memories
and cassava root
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 10:27 PM UTC
Let me fall back into your heart,
And lie besides you
On this purple, diamond sea.
Let me unpeel your skin from your bones
And find again the love within you,
Running blue against your wrists.
Let me still visit like an old friend,
There to protect you
From those burning sienna skies.
Let me take from you the bottle, the dagger too,
For I will not let you
Lose yourself on these frothy, hemlock waves.
Let me, though I am dead, still beat in your heart,
For I will not leave you,
Until you too are ready depart.
Dec 22, 2015
Dec 22, 2015 at 6:19 AM UTC
Sleep sweetly there beside me
In pre-dawn's lurid light
A shaft that swirls with galaxies
Too complex for my sight
Motionless, I danced there
In syncopated time
Twisting to each heartbeat
His silent, pulsing shine.
Perfection; silent symphony
Each lulling breath, a croon
Rose petal lips parted in twain
Would whisper secrets soon
Sienna lashes shrouded
Emerald youthful spheres that
Sent me off to mountain sides
Lush soil, pure and real.
I loved the slumbering forest
In warmth, in frost and rain
And in each silent morning I yearn
To whirl for him again.
Original, un-rhymed notes
When he slept I, motionless,
Danced
In the shaft of light with the dust motes
Feeling each heart beat
a syncopation for a wordless song
a symphony made more perfect
By the lull of air from his
rose petal lips
Sienna eyelashes hiding
Replenishing fountains of youth.
He had me thinking of the mountains,
Of the earth, of the rich soil
Of all things still and pure and beautiful.
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
with just keys, right pocket, as witness,
truly,
i would fall a little
more with
you close enough, with
you i
could go out every night
or sleep just a little
easier. we slip
into patterned strides,
eyes ablaze under the enclosure of
sodium streetlamps.
through scraps of sienna cloud,
one star emerges:
a steady twinkle in your eyes,
a heartbeat,
a truth and an intractability.
Dec 25, 2013
Dec 25, 2013 at 1:16 AM UTC