"sift" poems
~.~.~.~
floating
on the breeze
swirling
in a swoon
laments in
blue and purple
are the
petals of the moon
waned a
crescent of a flower
waxed to
cabbage rose
now the
tight held tithes
sift down
in
airy
floes
lying in the grass
of a dark
wide-open
field
sweet
swanning
petals find me
moon's offerings
revealed
i inhale their
fragrance
their light sweet perfume
they cover me
with kisses
the
petals
of
the
moon
Mar 12, 2015
Mar 12, 2015 at 8:54 AM UTC
Blowing in the wind,
Smells of salt; a hazy mist,
Sands of time run through sands so fine,
Damp with the tide that crashed like a fist,
The sun on the horizon starts to fade.
Cold and crisp, we sift through the waves,
Capped ice; a foaming delight,
They fill the air with sounds so fair,
Our toes fall through the water like an anchor,
The light falls and the night reigns.
Fingers upon fingers, playing on their own,
We fall through the air; cutting the sky,
My back to the earth, yours to the moon,
Our gaze locks like lovers leading light between us,
The sounds of the world come alive.
A gentle caress against skin so soft,
A kindled embrace, rolling against sand so coarse,
Passions flair in the darkness, the night breathes heavy,
As the ocean kisses the sands, so too our lips,
Whispers and sighs cut through the crashing flood.
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 11:34 PM UTC
Amid the verbose magicians
Seeking kinships
And sailing deep into their arduous mists
Watching them peddle their afternoon
To a handful of smiling children holding their breath
Amazed in gentle body trick
The older men of age
Leaning deep into their creased chins
Stroking the grizzled fat
Blinding light of soul
Staring down the barrel of life
Striking the enemy one last time
And yet smiling
sober,
Met of match,
taking care of their kids.
Then there's the cold-clocked dudes
On the phone pushing buttons
In a button-up raglan
Lost indistinct
the promised land
The golden shores swept away by
inconvenient time
Left shopping in an auto mall
"Won't you look at the time?"
7.07 APR
Boy what a steal!
And Steve maddened and screamed
As the lines blurred instinctual between opposing teams
And the oven dinged a great alabaster slant
Leaning towards the new millenitants
Rise up!
***** the wheel
Turn the axel from pistons
To alkaline metal
And doubt with great monumental
Quality
That the machine borders all
And we cannot retreat
And while I sift bouyantly between the waves
Searching the puzzle piece within the molecules
Reconnecting with the things
And representing
dreams on a 66 hertz screen
I call rather failing
Towards a black rocked shore
Towards the sweet Dorigen
Of my dreams
Finding an integral of time
And space
And calculating the intangible slope
Of my desmise
With the imaginary constiutent
Of that lighted mind.
Jul 30, 2018
Jul 30, 2018 at 4:24 PM UTC
the niggly nasty narcissist
who keeps you off the road insists- to stay in all your thoughts he sits and strips your magical mind to bits with all his games and all his grifts a punch a preach consider the junk he's ********* sift, mist or haze
send him away
cause your wisdom yo its better than this,
so think - the ways to rip this spit
im a free man now
peel the author away from this
blow your mind !
just to see the way that i can outline this
and keep myself a verse afar from all your ****
Nov 29, 2011
Nov 29, 2011 at 12:56 PM UTC
You do not deserve to know everything about me
I am a yellow tulip amongst red roses
Come closer, you may like what you find
Come closer, you may find that you don't
I will not make any promises that I am any good
Although unassuming externally, you may find that
when you sift through my petals,
that when all is said and done,
I am nothing more than an ugly lie
And I will not care
I do not live or die for anyone
The Earth is my Mother
The Sun, my Father
I will grow whether you water me or not
My life will be the buzzing of the bees, the rainy days, the occasional bunny nibbling on my fragile leaves
I will die when the ground is tired of my presence
I will wilt because it was meant to be
Not because I was crushed by the unforgiving sole of your shoe
Destroy me.
I will always grow back.
Feb 3, 2011
Feb 3, 2011 at 6:48 PM UTC
How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we
Play cards together, you invariably,
However the pack parts,
Still hold the Queen of Hearts?
I've scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze,
Resolved to fathom these your secret ways:
But, sift them as I will,
Your ways are secret still.
I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again;
But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain:
Vain hope, vain forethought, too;
That Queen still falls to you.
I dropped her once, prepense; but, ere the deal
Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel:
"There should be one card more,"
You said, and searched the floor.
I cheated once: I made a private notch
In Heart-Queen's back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch;
Yet such another back
Deceived me in the pack:
The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown
An imitative dint that seemed my own;
This notch, not of my doing,
Misled me to my ruin.
It baffles me to puzzle out the clew,
Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you:
Unless, indeed, it be
Natural affinity.
10.8k
An era of feminism,
Which should never be questioned.
Empowering women
To strive, and strive again.
We speak of desexualization.
To free the ******
Unveil carnal harassment,
And speak our minds.
But we can be sightless
Toward the sexualization of man.
The way we view testosterone
As broad shoulders and shirtlessness.
Do not sift through my words!
I believe in the power feminism.
But I am disappointed
With the sexualization of man.
We're determined to trump the blurred *****
Yet drool over a man in Calvin Klein.
We frown upon the "Perfect Body" campaign...
But applaud a "built" man.
I wish for bodies to be just that:
Bodies.
For sexualized men and women
To be more than carved features.
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 11:48 PM UTC
At what height is appropriate
To strain, sift
I must be doing this wrong
You are beautiful
But you are
For show
I dreamt of temptation
Terrorism
A storm
You are
Cruel
I dreamt so vivid
When I woke up you weren't there
I was still
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 11:42 AM UTC
Consumed by the constant rolls that play
Developed so well, recorded so well
Chasing the aroma that gently caresses the keys of the grand olfactory organs
Sinking into the fibers that catch me when I’m melting
They remember the tight grip that I’ve imposed on them
The grip imposed on me
Yet I want to sift through
Entangled by the loose strands I can’t help but to make vulnerable
The sway in the tongue that rolls tones so heavy
Leaves me tender
Such fervor unfolding itself, irritating the chests it lays on
Ethanol giving shoves until the words rupture into your gaze
Listening for more in hopes the shower could saturate me again
Hopeful and tender, I immerse you in ego
Later washing away everything that froth before our eyes
Then repeating the same intoxicating copulation
Until the light breaks through and I’m presented an abbreviated endearment
Leaving me instilled until the next time it’s decided times can concur
Jan 12, 2019
Jan 12, 2019 at 10:03 AM UTC
I lay spread out on
My local shingle beach
Letting the pebbles
Sift through my fingers
I consider the myriad
Shapes and forms they take.
The varying rust
Charcoal grey and mustard shades
I set myself a mission
In the multitudes
That the sea brings to my feet
I will find amongst the
Copious cobbles
The ultimate pebble
Perfect and pleasingly
Quirky or smooth.
I become so absorbed by
This sifting sorting
Comforting process
A simple quest
I forget myself
And my proximity to the waves
Until i am splashed
And soaked and
Have to vow to take up
This valiant quest
Another day.
Until then I have taken
Home a few shortlisted
Candidates
And made a promise to stand up when
The winner is found
And make a little trumpet
Fanfare sound
And hold the stone aloft!
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 6:54 PM UTC
I used to stand in awe and watch Grandma making biscuits.
She’d take her wooden bowl, then dip the floor and sift it.
As snowy flour would drift to form a mound of just so much;
She’d form a crater lake of buttermilk and shortening with her loving touch.
She would smile and watch our faces as she squeezed the flour to goop
And transform the mess she made into dough that she would scoop.
A pinch she’d take and make a ball to flatten in her palm.
Then with her thumb she’d press it down, so gently and so calm.
With care she next would take the dough and place it on a pan;
A thumb print etched in dough as she continued with her plan,
To place the pats side by side until the pan was filled
By perfect rows all laid out with hands so quick and skilled.
That cozy pan she placed into an oven warmed just right
And closed the door to seal them in and cook them out of sight.
In timely care she’d pull them free, delicious golden browns
Setting fresh hot biscuits on the table, to banish morning frowns.
Now I stand in awe and think of all the biscuits she has made,
Of all the time her thumb has pressed, as her heart has prayed.
Life finds us now, her children, in life’s wooden bowls
And we feel her loving touch as she leaves her thumbprint on our souls.
For Grandma Mary Grace Kindley Davis
On the occasion of her 105th birthday, February 9, 2007
Presented to her at her Birthday Party the next day.
©2007 Michael S. Davis
Feb 18, 2013
Feb 18, 2013 at 12:28 PM UTC
Don't you know
My mop and glow
Is brighter than
A star over Mazatlán?
I'd be more than spittin'
While you're just there sittin'
This ain't just a game
Though it be the same
When they say don't hate
The player when you're just at the gate,
I fill all the stadium seats
And provide all the player's cleats,
Yeah, you get my drift
Like after hockey left to sift
For teeth and glory
Only half the story,
Through blood and ice
I don't just play and act nice,
I am red riding hood's wolf
Watch out or you'll get a hoof
On your forehead wear it proud
The only crown you'll wear in the crowd...
APAD13 015 - © okpoet
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 16, 2013 at 2:53 AM UTC
****
***A fine play
of the
clay
soft
and sift
moistened
turns malleable
gathered and made
to spin on a slow wheel
formed with shaping hands
baked at a high temperature
comes out a beautiful craft
and both of 'em are ready
an urn from the pottery
and the poetry!!***
****
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 9:24 PM UTC
This is what animates me
The force to set the motion of my soul
Gears that grind, thoughts that whir, the sustenance of something holy.
I do not think I sprang from Adam’s Rib
I think I must have been struck into the ground like a stone
A thread of lightning from the leaden sky,
And the mechanics that rose after
Demanded fuel, demanded heat
And thus was born in the cooling core of me
This mad desire, this stumbling, ceaseless search
For words to light a fire in my head
For eyes to light a fire in my bones
For some weapon of beauty
Some flaming sword
A tool- nothing more-
To sift among the dust and grit of time
To stoke the embers and evoke a spark
Prodding, prospecting
As for gold
Searching for a remnant which still burns
Softly, feeble, buried but unquenched
I chase the fire
For it must always be:
It cannot die
But cannot be held
It is escaped and never captured,
Only felt and lost, an infinite second-
A running step to overtake itself.
Jan 30, 2018
Jan 30, 2018 at 4:01 PM UTC
If that night could remember
it would call him back
to our Chinese restaurant
to fried rice and steaming tea
to our winter refuge of tile and cushions
60s retro black and white
Chrome legs of lacquered tables
with its mural of
our Great Wall
...winding, distant, wonder
If the snow hadn't muffled all
but our voices
we would not be—
so alone
Only I
felt his arm take its chance
around my shoulder
Guiding warmth
as good excuse as any
to touch
Two miles on foot
An arc in time
In lace of white
to hide— what might....
Below my window
“Good Night”
not enough
for troubadour
singing, pleading, stumbling...
(I worry about his long way home)
...and hardly notice...
How gently Time joins Snow
as if they cannot bare
instead, conspire
Decide the crystals
Send the flakes to sift over him
This loss needs snow
to blur his face
to fade from view....
This— tender let-down from the sky
As only snow can do...
Cover with beauty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o6zMPLcXZ8
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 10:39 PM UTC
A generation navigating illusionment:
I am one. Excavation; i sift. Shaking
a plastic basket.
Round - and channel mouths spout
a wire crosshatch. I
Tap
Against
My palm.
Fine flour lands on the counter and
In my head I listen to the same songs
because I already know the words.
I look for a truth outside my mind
because on weekdays I tell myself
I’m not worth knowing.
How do you stop hating yourself
When you hate yourself because
You hate yourself?
When I slide my hand across the counter,
White flour mist puffs and I listen:
Mac Miller’s alive. He said he’s
surviving on ***** almonds, and granola bars.
Grasped in some five fingers
A thin red handle.
Apr 10, 2020
Apr 10, 2020 at 4:31 PM UTC
#Mr. Piano Man how your
fingers rain down on the keys
dancing a somber ballet
capturing the feeling of being empty
like those bottles underneath
Here Mr. Piano Man
the next drink is on me
while we sift through debris
of our melancholy
Every note stings
every chord bleeds
woe is you
and
woe is me
play
Mr. Piano Man
a song to our ennui
Let it rain Mr. Piano Man
let the storm hammer the strings
lets swim in the puddle
of whats spilt underneath
Oh Mr. Piano Man
What is that I hear?
That note that was just hit
it sounded rather queer
there is no room for happiness
at the bottom of this beer
No! NO! Mr. Piano Man
I don't want the sun
go back to stormy waters
to where you had begun
I thought you a friend
I thought we allies
I thought we understood
the sounds of demise
Mr. Piano Man how you so betrayed
with your songs of love and spring
every note my heart aches
every chord a bee sting
Mr. Piano Man this is my goodbye
I am leaving you now
please don't cry
I am going to my new friend
Mr. Bartender
How do you do?
Give me an endless bottle
and another drunk to talk to.
#
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 3:07 PM UTC
Above my home where the dark clouds
curl into the sky clinging for a home to
rest their sleepy depiction, shadowed
trees hum sweet lullabies, lonely leaves
breathe in the sad song of fallen dimensions,
letting its lifeless view roll upon their frame,
the chilled breeze sailing in the skyline,
as I scramble my way out of a filthy dumpster,
a mountain of disintegrating mess covering
my broken body, hovering flies surrounding
sticky strips of spaghetti, moldy mashed potatoes,
and moldy chicken *** pies, while my mind sunk
into traveled thoughts, bruised hands pressed against
the creases in my forehead, allowing my existence
to feel the stranded scars streaming in various mazes,
dull eyes flushed with a burning disorder, aching cheeks
and chests nestled in darkening chamber corners, buried
hips and thighs uprooting in somber blades of grass,
thorned, torn, and destroyed in different worlds. As I stood
on the slippery pavement staring at the ruffled scenery
in my sight, spinning streetlights thickening into slouched
positions, screaming sidewalks spilling sadness and madness
in the drenched air, razor-edged buildings inching into crushed
centimeters, jumbled meters, ****** yards. I replayed the sober
images in my head, the way my young brown-skinned mom said
I would never amount to anything, how I could hear the raged
noun ****** sift into the distance, its flaming mechanics
accelerating into screeching sounds, the way she hurled
her fists at my smashed face, every vibrant language
breaking apart, slamming shut into closed infinites,
snagged contractions and gerunds diverging into
shuddering double spaced negatives, the way she threw
my lingering body inside the trash dumpster, her sharp
scarlet words, You are no son of mine, ricocheting off
savage surfaces, sparking my soul in a calamity
of choking diction.
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 1:04 PM UTC
Bobo's kitchen
in the kitchen
icebergs rampage from the freezer
burying pizzas and waffles
in a glacier jungle
Bobo swings forks and knives
at the ice until the maintenance man
cusses in Polish
gallons of water
dripping downstairs
sizzling Bertalina's soul
the fiery bilingual single mom
living in fear
below his fear
of noise complaints
she sends tape recordings
to the landlord in her
cute red faced anger
loud people! and bongos!
guitars! stomping! laughter!
nightmares for her boys
who think they hear ghosts
her tight black spandex
drives Bobo mad when she runs
drifted scents of her food
sift in through his windows
knocking him out
in hungry frustration!
¿Como estás? he asks her
I speak ******* English! she barks back
back up the stairs Bobo goes
to his own kitchen where
the mice crawl out the stove tops
and potatoes grow tree roots
clear through the window
toward another life
Jake Mahaffey
Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 12:28 AM UTC
I
Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles
To-morrow's diver in her ***** milk,
Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone
Bolt for the salt unborn.
The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled
Corrosive spring out of the iceberg's crop,
The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled
The swing of milk was tufted in the pap,
For half of love was planted in the lost,
And the unplanted ghost.
The broken halves are fellowed in a *******
The crutch that marrow taps upon their sleep,
Limp in the street of sea, among the rabble
Of tide-tongued heads and bladders in the deep,
And stake the sleepers in the savage grave
That the vampire laugh.
The patchwork halves were cloven as they scudded
The wild pigs' wood, and slime upon the trees,
******* the dark, kissed on the cyanide,
And loosed the braiding adders from their hairs,
Rotating halves are horning as they drill
The arterial angel.
What colour is glory? death's feather? tremble
The halves that pierce the pin's point in the air,
And ***** the thumb-stained heaven through the thimble.
The ghost is dumb that stammered in the straw,
The ghost that hatched his havoc as he flew
Blinds their cloud-tracking eye.
II
My world is pyramid. The padded mummer
Weeps on the desert ochre and the salt
Incising summer.
My Egypt's armour buckling in its sheet,
I scrape through resin to a starry bone
And a blood parhelion.
My world is cypress, and an English valley.
I piece my flesh that rattled on the yards
Red in an Austrian volley.
I hear, through dead men's drums, the riddled lads,
******** their bowels from a hill of bones,
Cry Eloi to the guns.
My grave is watered by the crossing Jordan.
The Arctic scut, and basin of the South,
Drip on my dead house garden.
Who seek me landward, marking in my mouth
The straws of Asia, lose me as I turn
Through the Atlantic corn.
The fellow halves that, cloven as they swivel
On casting tides, are tangled in the shells,
Bearding the unborn devil,
Bleed from my burning fork and smell my heels.
The tongue's of heaven gossip as I glide
Binding my angel's hood.
Who blows death's feather? What glory is colour?
I blow the stammel feather in the vein.
The **** is glory in a working pallor.
My clay unsuckled and my salt unborn,
The secret child, I sift about the sea
Dry in the half-tracked thigh.
3.9k
Thanks be to God,
For every good and perfect gift
Comes down from the Father of lights
Who causes us in Christ
The world to overcome
And to joyfully sing.
I am a man flawed,
A Christian the Devil will sift
For a season. But the serpent bites
His own tongue, in time; and I, imparadised,
Will ask him when he's dumb,
Death, where is thy sting?
Jan 14, 2022
Jan 14, 2022 at 3:26 AM UTC
waste matter discharged from the mother's bowels; feces,
excreta, stools, droppings; waste matter,
ordure, dung; **** poo, dirt, turds, ****
"cleaning up ferret excrement":
mid 16th century: from French excrément
or Latin excrementum, from excernere ‘to sift out’ feces;
act of defecating;
a contemptible or worthless person;
something worthless; garbage; nonsense;
"this book is **** unpleasant experiences
or treatment; "I went through a lot of **** last year"
things or stuff, especially personal belongings;
"he left all his **** in my apartment"
events or circumstances;
_"some crazy **** went down last night"_
any psychoactive drug, especially marijuana [the good ****
good **** verb: **** 3rd person present: *****
past tense: ******* past participle: *******
past tense: **** past participle: **** past tense: shat;
past participle: shat; gerund or present participle: ********
expel feces from the body,
soiling one's clothes as a result;
expelling feces accidentally; very frightened.
tease or try to deceive someone or thing.
"I **** you not" exclamation
exclamation: ****
[exclamation of disgust, anger, or annoyance]
Old English scitte ‘diarrhea,’ of Germanic origin;
related to Dutch schijten, German scheissen [verb];
_The term was originally neutral and used without ****** connotation_;
*********** from Greek κόπρος,
kópros—excrement & φιλία, philía—
liking, fondness, also called scatophilia
or **** [Greek: σκατά, skatá-feces],
is the paraphilia involving
****** arousal & pleasure
from specific feces;
meanly, his mother said, _u can drink my ***
but don't eat my **** then she ****
& *** & the boy drank but when
he put the warm **** to his mouth,
she slapped it out of his hand &
yelled, I told u not to eat my ****
& the boy began to cry & feeling
bad his mother turned to let him lick
the bowl & rim the moist wet hole between
her pudgy cheeks & then gave him more
of her tangy *** to drink like lemonade
& chocolate chips, sometimes it was
more like sweet sherbet; but she never
hit him again & he's been eating her ****
ever since; now, his wife lets him drink
her *** & he eats from the baby's *****
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 12:38 AM UTC
Coastline, rocky, rugged, proud,
Crumbling cliffs in ozone shroud,
Sun-kissed drifts of desert sand,
Golden frame of a sea cradled land.
Fishing village, atmospheric hub,
Brass band playing, outside quaint old pub,
Boats, all sizes, rest near harbour wall,
Wading birds sift through tide-filled pool.
Foliage explosion of a Cornish hedge,
Country lanes snake, and young birds fledge,
Ruminants, punctuating, quilted hill,
Buzzards soar and wise hares are still.
Tin mine engine house, towering stack,
Roof caved in, gorse and bracken’s back,
White clay peak, geometrical and sleek,
Earth’s riches gouged, canyon deep.
Moor-land, open, untamed, granite strewn,
Wild ponies dance to a skylark’s tune,
Tor and beacon, barrow and mound,
You’re in God’s own country, when you walk this ground.
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 5:05 AM UTC
Tonight is a cluster of
Recognitions, remembrances
Mostly reminiscence
Which sift in the breeze
Gusting beneath the temporary
Tarpaulin tent
Backs are slapped
Arms embraced
Smiles predominate
As shiny faces and gleaming foreheads
Illuminated by flashing cameras
Twinkle like fireflies displaying
In a muggy June meadow
Photos pulled from stained
Billfolds move from hand to hand
Displaying glossies of babies, graduations
Weddings and “The big catch”
Relatives, friends and officials
Find their place on folded metal chairs
For a wedding ceremony
Tonight has become a gathering
Mar 10, 2018
Mar 10, 2018 at 8:46 AM UTC