"sifting" poems
The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,
Came dazzling around, into the rocks,
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas
To possess Aran. Or did Aran rush
to throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?
Did sea define the land or land the sea?
Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity.
26.5k
Last night I cried myself to sleep thinking about you,
the ********** chemistry that we used to share over
the midnight campfire, our sleek bodies rising in passion
with each bursting flame, deep shifting fingers pressed
up against thick sheets, as our ankles and thighs
harmonized and smiled, glossy green eyes filled
with lust and immense thoughts. Your soul was
calling out to me in the nighttime sky,
vibrant skin sifting inside timeless climaxes
and rewinds, shimmering lights and hypnotic
gleams, an ocean of water and poetry gliding on
booming beats. The world began to sink inside
our romance, the horniness of our hot flesh sizzling
in sparking temptations, deep designs and glimmering
patterns. And as our nations made music over earth’s
creation, brilliant escapes and captivating depths,
you were the magnificent star inside my kingdom,
the purest existence that could illuminate the fire
inside eyes.
Dec 13, 2018
Dec 13, 2018 at 11:08 AM UTC
My mentor spoke to me of two rivals,
Once, they had been friends in some distant past.
But the years have eaten their love and made grudges manifest.
|The two shattered into broken glass
To my wise master I asked only one,
One question... In all my range.
One question I asked:
“What changed?”
In the outskirts, at the home of my daughter
Where you can stare at the stars or passing cars
None more brighter than the other,
We share memories of my grandmother.
In the photographs, she looks so much younger.
Not frail, but a fighter, lover and saintly|
To me, she asks plainly,
One question, and one question only.
Sifting through the ages of years past:
“What Changed?”
At the kitchen table, feeling inadequate,
My lover screaming and frustrated,
I recall memories when we had been intimate.
Times when movement was made for desire and not duty
|A calendar of nights left in confused abstinence
I interrupt.
She delays rage.
I beg,
“What Changed?”
_
In the last few hours of night
The dawn reaches me at last.
I had locked moments-
Literal seconds of time as the truth.
But it was always changing
In flux and morphing.
Turning into something new
Just for a moment, and then on again
“What Changed?”
Everything.
Always.
Jul 20, 2015
Jul 20, 2015 at 7:36 AM UTC
Ah, the season of gifting.
Antagonist of year-long thrifting.
Tradition sadistic,
Materialistic,
Four quarters in pockets worth sifting.
This year I hereby proclaim
I shan’t be consumed by the game.
Cycle of curse
Purpose perverse
The namesake, an oversight became.
Christ’s birth did in fact begin,
Holiday distracted by sin.
Misguided it be
To forget idly
The sacrifice He made for all men.
We naively regard generosity
As holiday’s behavioral piosity.
But if dollars and cents
Are the tools of offense
Over shadow favor luminosity.
Water in Africa is *****
American child in poverty.
Politics aside,
Convenient homicide,
To enable the ills of society.
In the global economy we flaunt
Wealth by comparison, bitter taunt.
First world problems abound
Pass the turkey around
Central heating and air, what a jaunt!
What if this season we decide
To extend two palms open wide?
Sacrificing ourselves
Rather than stocking our shelves
Dying whispers echo true: “we tried.”
Don’t spend your money on me this year.
Not iPhones, not tickets, not Blu-ray or beer.
Instead know you can
Distribute more than
A snort, a lie, and a tear.
(optional conclusion to assist interpretation of last line)
Snort of derision,
Lies of provision,
Tears, even true,
Hardly subdue
Anguish deprived of tradition’s revision.
Dec 26, 2012
Dec 26, 2012 at 5:25 PM UTC
In a bedroom in small-town Pennsylvania,
you’ll find an unmade bed,
a pile of clothes on the floor—
clean but not folded,
open drawers and dusty shelves,
a desk in the corner of the room
with pictures laid across it.
When I caught my first fish at six.
I held it at arm’s length by the fishing line
to avoid the slimy scales,
a frown on my face from being forced
to sit silently in the cold.
When my family went to Marco Island,
my sister and I, sifting sand for the best seashells
in our matching swimsuits and hats.
Mom and dad’s fights forgotten in our fun.
High school graduation
posing with my best friend since first grade,
diplomas in one hand and an extra cap held between us
because not everyone survived all four years.
Move-in day at college,
sitting on my raised bed with a grey comforter
and two decorative pillows the color of cotton candy.
Sweat on my brow from southern humidity
and moving furniture without the help of a father.
The pictures are merely snapshots
that lack the full story.
How I learned what it meant for love to fall apart
when I was eight years old.
My sister warned me before it happened,
told me what a divorce was.
I mistook her for joking until they called us upstairs.
Dad cried when they told us, but mom held her tears
until the day he left. The sounds of her cries
escaping from behind a closed door.
“This doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”
But that’s exactly what it meant.
How I was taught by my father that love is conditional,
and I repeatedly needed to prove myself
through good grades and unquestioning obedience.
Forced to stay home to spend time with the family,
sitting wordlessly on the couch while he watched TV.
Made guilty for wanting to spend time with friends
because that somehow meant that I was a bad daughter.
It’s funny—I never asked myself if he was a good father.
If you look harder at the bedroom,
you’ll find journals filled with bitter words,
screws from disassembled pencil sharpeners, loose razors, and Aquaphor,
food wrappers stuffed in hidden places,
a closet brimming with junk and pairs of shoes,
evidence of a story untold. Until you.
Sep 20, 2023
Sep 20, 2023 at 9:09 PM UTC
Flamingo high,
flamingo low,
when flamingo stretchy-leggy, then flamingo grow.
Cheeky beaking, shifty sifting, lifting up a flipper;
notty neck and naughty pecks,
while dancing with a kipper.
Flaming heck and flaming Oh!
Flaming flamingularonimo!
I tango and flamenco
and I imitate a swan,
but this winking pink flamingo's
blinking going going gone.
Sep 22, 2011
Sep 22, 2011 at 11:28 AM UTC
Summer sun and car rides.
We drive with Third Eye Blind and Oasis telling us where to go.
Which beach do we jump on today?
Doesn't matter, I'm counting the waves.
We came, found that peace and left our stress.
Sifting sand through laughter and digging holes with hands.
What else could we ask for in life?
That moment. Go find it.
Let's get back there.
Jul 15, 2014
Jul 15, 2014 at 1:42 PM UTC
.
The waves spilled the rising tide
back into the scattered footprints in the sand
deeply entrenched in life’s mystery,
receding into every breaking wave
A stiff sea breeze put back every grain of sand,
elements of a larger object gathers,
gravity firmed, into the silent shoreline chasms—
a beheld essence washed out to sea
by the fugitive tides and retreating sea-foam
Soon all trodden traces visibly vanish;
unmarked mileposts on a metaphysical pathway
slip away back to a windswept shoreline
and elapsing summer tide
Seabirds glide in slow-motion,
held sway into the shapeless gusts —
as if feathered puppets hovering,
hanging from the rafters
of the burgeoning orange sky
There's an uncommon peace in the renaissance;
effervescent crisp ocean air filling
the indefinable emptiness
marooned within each heartbeat’s echo
Each new breath inhaled, disappearing within
the unhealed hollow of every thing once believed;
fully aware this life is unholdable as time,
yet feeling many things deeply retained
in each passing moment—
slipping away like a handful of sand
sifting through all these hands once held
Presence becoming wreathed in a miasma of stillness,
space that levitates like an unpredictable fog
that seeps into the gnawing voids
of an unsated hunger
harlon rivers ... August 1st, 2018
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 8:34 PM UTC
Sun up till sun down
Trapped in a perpetual frown
Moon comes then she goes
Drops free fall from my nose
Waking hours in the daylight
Aimless motions; clumsy, puppet-like
Waking hours in the night
Uncomfortable in my own skin and psych
Sleeplessness be my companion
Restlessness be my actions
Despondence be my demon
Crest fallen be my reason
Frantically sifting through my head
Vertically upright or supine in bed
Compartmentalising might be key
To fend off self inflicted insanity
Desperation hangs overhead; ripe and bruised
Excuses upon excuses ridiculously overused
Furiously typing before my mind curds
Hopes of finding peace in these unspoken words
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 10:45 PM UTC
Agreed, that love is attraction
- though not only surface sensual,
as you maintain,
not only toward the external -
But that sweet involuntary pull is
also inward for expansion;
for interior sifting
and resolution.
Love is primarily attraction to
unexplored depths
of the self.
- fr
Sep 3, 2019
Sep 3, 2019 at 11:57 PM UTC
I write in the midnight corner of now and what is to come. Sifting through the ashes of the forgotten. I seek what I fail to find in a light I can scarcely see. The rain washes the sins from my skin so that the ones inside can bleed back out. My words catch the air with gentle, intense passion. I caress the broken cheek hoping to fix it and finding only myself more broken. I know not of what is to come but I can prepare myself with the ammunition of my past. The brittle autumn wind calms me with the vibrant colors of a dying world. My mind wanders into the absent recesses of my twisted imagination. The words I write copy the voices in my torn heartstrings. I lust for the cold rain fingers that embezzle my mind. My soul is painted with the bright blackness of a blackhole's laughter. There is a butterfly caged in my stomach and I'm too afraid to let it free.
- - -
When will I know that I've found rapture?
~S.C. Kelley
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 3:04 PM UTC
From my spirit’s gray defeat,
From my pulse’s flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault’s slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.
For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit’s sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.
7k
Wake me when spring has sprung
when the cold is gone,
and skies no longer gray.
Rouse me with the cries of birds
a warm wind blown my way
and a green light in the shade.
Dress me in the blooming buds,
Let butterflies be my lips,
And raindrops as my eyes.
Replace my heart with a shining star
And fill my head with a soft white cloud.
Drip the shine of morning in my veins
And I'll have the fresh green grass for my hair.
Take my bones for branches.
Make my tears have a honey-suckle taste.
My breath would be the pollen sifting through the air.
Take me from my sleeping ground
And lay me in the fresh cold stream.
Wake me when spring is sprung,
But until then, I'm going to sleep.
Dec 17, 2012
Dec 17, 2012 at 10:50 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 use this as a writing tool
A freestyle flow to see me through
I am just a simple M.A.N
Filled with complicated sand
Sifting through a hourglass
I see the future in my past
Feeling pain from my joy
I can create to destroy
What is special? What is new?
False is fake but what is true?
Gather moments I've collected
Seen only from my own perspective
Words the fruit..I am the tree
All is still a part of me
So go ahead take a bite
Feel my soul as I write
These words to help me understand
As I walk this path..lay a plan
Take you to another place
Where no one is trying to win the race
Sister and Brother stand hand and hand
My imagination can create that land
A mighty river runs from my soul
Providing me with my freestyle flow....
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 2:06 PM UTC
The left of center
are in north bound throes of a dupe
and can't begin to forecast this wonder of polluted marvel,
in the morrow
my optics discharged in a catastrophic traversal
While whimsy and accidental feels like I've taken pills
a power rain this sobbing has spilled
No longer to be contained based on sheer will
Attacked by neurotic transcending
While sifting through files and photo stacks
Came across multiples of your smiling face
From when I shot you, a couple hundred miles back
No one would dare debase the abundance of your emitted grace
Bloodshot mist eyed and blind from tears
control lost during transport steer
Drips off my cheek pouring down my chest
Could make great sense to don a life vest
Filling up floorboards like a spraying firehose
Shattering cascades diamondize the windows
A single glance at an image turns farmland into rural seaquake
If they interview my lifeless corpse what a headline this will make,
turning tragedy into a foolish mistake
people will curse and laugh
Paved over roads now films unseen
when dusk fuse night from the weep my eyes dispensed
Elements effected by incidents
Rising waves climb over to decimate interstate 65
All over a tiny tear drop and her sweet smiling photograph
Oct 20, 2018
Oct 20, 2018 at 8:01 PM UTC
THE BALLOONS hang on wires in the Marigold Gardens.
They spot their yellow and gold, they juggle their blue and red, they float their faces on the face of the sky.
Balloon face eaters sit by hundreds reading the eat cards, asking, "What shall we eat?"-and the waiters, "Have you ordered?" they are sixty ballon faces sifting white over the tuxedoes.
Poets, lawyers, ad men, mason contractors, smartalecks discussing "educated ********* here they put ***** into their balloon faces.
Here sit the heavy balloon face women lifting crimson lobsters into their crimson faces, lobsters out of Sargossa sea bottoms.
Here sits a man cross-examining a woman, "Where were you last night? What do you do with all your money? Who's buying your shoes now, anyhow?"
So they sit eating whitefish, two balloon faces swept on God's night wind.
And all the time the balloon spots on the wires, a little mile of festoons, they play their own silence play of film yellow and film gold, bubble blue and bubble red.
The wind crosses the town, the wind from the west side comes to the banks of marigolds boxed in the Marigold Gardens.
Night moths fly and fix their feet in the leaves and eat and are seen by the eaters.
The jazz outfit sweats and the drums and the saxophones reach for the ears of the eaters.
The chorus brought from Broadway works at the fun and the slouch of their shoulders, the kick of their ankles, reach for the eyes of the eaters.
These girls from Kokomo and Peoria, these hungry girls, since they are paid-for, let us look on and listen, let us get their number.
Why do I go again to the balloons on the wires, something for nothing, kin women of the half-moon, dream women?
And the half-moon swinging on the wind crossing the town-these two, the half-moon and the wind-this will be about all, this will be about all.
Eaters, go to it; your mazuma pays for it all; it's a knockout, a classy knockout-and payday always comes.
The moths in the marigolds will do for me, the half-moon, the wishing wind and the little mile of balloon spots on wires-this will be about all, this will be about all.
5.5k
What to do about wanderlust?
Should it be quelled?
Desktop backgrounds are my only escape
Maps with tacks and backpacks with knick-knacks
It all seems so far away
Cobblestone steps are wearing down
By the feet of enlightened in wondrous towns
While chairs are pushed in
Or left out of place
Thoughts are escaping to the vacuum of space
This Earl Grey is mint tea in Tangiers' seats
Or gold and black Yunnan at her highest peaks
It's sifting through pans of Fynbos' red leaves
What to do about wanderlust?
Should it be quelled?
I seem to dwell
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 11:47 AM UTC
*Though, should I
or have I begun?*
To feel the tussling
Of blurring bodies.
Transforming and dancing,
Through these very halls.
Where aching is thick,
and a embrace is a release.
*Should I begin?
How should I begin?*
Swallow the dagger,
stabbing from behind.
Let it sit deep in my stomach.
Push it further, where it can’t cut.
*Where will it end?
How will I begin?*
Under lock and key,
Just where I left it .
It escapes as it did just now,
conjuring a puncture to bone.
Blood flows,
Rushes out into the world.
*Is this a release?
How can I heal?*
Pouring out,
It tastes salty on the cheek
The color is dark,
cold to the touch.
Purging the night,
that stained blood black.
Sifting the chill,
of steel from bone.
Ringing out whats left of gore and fluid,
down the drain.
*I can begin now.
This is the end.*
Oct 28, 2016
Oct 28, 2016 at 11:13 AM UTC
i am the hookah queen
and drifting in my hookah dream, i find
that i have no one else
to care for.
i know nothing of their bitterness,
their wantonness, their greed,
i know nothing of that world,
only me.
and sifting through my hookah dream,
colored with a hookah ream,
and pulled apart with all the careless shadows,
i smile, (i the hookah queen) and contentedly i drift,
i am going, i am going, i am gone.
Jul 8, 2013
Jul 8, 2013 at 9:01 PM UTC
instead of being intertwined we’re the farthest we’ve ever been
i chose to look within
you always chose the life of sin
i stopped trying to be perfect and had to partake
i too wanna eat and have my cake
what was once golden has turned to rust
i understand why they say nothing lasts forever
cause everything is so mother ******* fallible
i had no choice but to pick up the pieces all by my lonesome and gained confidence with each step and each breath
what once felt heavy is now being forgotten
oh how lovely life can be when you forget
thank you for breaking my heart because i would’ve never had the strength to let you go
each event which you performed against me pushed me further and further away
from the love i kept in my heart for you
it seems to have disappeared and i can’t find it these days
i still believe in love
i still feel the warmth and always hope for the best
life is just a test
it’s sifting and then we’re blessed
this will be the last poem i ever write about you
i might’ve misconstrued the motion
i promise to write about a new love from here on out
just disregard this notion
Nov 7, 2021
Nov 7, 2021 at 7:52 PM UTC
So, this is godhood. This is how it works.
It's dreaming up a world and killing it,
Abandoning the foibles and the quirks
Of crushed-together crumblings and bits,
Then sweeping out the wreckage with a curse
And carving out another fever dream.
It's wandering a mindscape universe
And sifting through the crop to find the cream
So you can save it while you burn the rest,
Just for the room to have another try.
The lovelies you've been cradling close to chest?
In time you'll cast them off to wilt and die
But for a while they're almost what you need.
Go raze the field and plant another seed.
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 1:32 PM UTC
I am up
Awake
Before the sun
It's arrival
Heralded by
Colors creeping
Out against
The retreating night sky
Do not mistake me
For a morning person
I do not relish this
Nor do I mourn
For sleep
lost
It could be
found
But this
is necessary
Not without joy
Not without sacrifice
Without a word
It simply is
A ride
My Fortress
of Solitude
For a mind
Besieged
By thought
At war with
Itself
Do not
retreat
Into the past
A ruthless place
A heckling pace
That tells you
You cannot
Hang on
Give no portage
To fate
For you cannot grasp
What the future holds
Just
Keep moving
Focus
This ride
It is the only ride
That matters
I wrap myself
In its tight fabric
It's sounds
Clicking and clacking
Racing thoughts
Shifting
Centrifugal forces
Sifting
As I order
Myself
Ride
As long
as I pedal
I am
Present
Jul 14, 2016
Jul 14, 2016 at 6:49 AM UTC
See the Rabbi. See him tormented by choice. See his people. See them wracked by hate. See the others. See their anger radiate outward in glowing spokes, exploding firebrand in a tinder city.
On a night like any other, the moon at sixth house, fulcrum of pinwheel zodiac, the Rabbi, awash in lidless starlight, rises somber and makes his choice. And when the sun is furthermost, he and three of his others gather at the murmuring riverbank where the brown clay is most pliable and begin to dig, sifting rock and root from trundled earth. Hours spent exhuming the clay, molding it, kneading its muscles, tracing its veins, baking its skin in the starlight. More hours spent in whispering prayer, the words bent and somersaulting over themselves like tumbling books.
See Truth drawn on its forehead, life etched from clay and word. As the sun rises, so it does, wavering at first, but steadier, lapping at the river, and their faces move slowly across the water. See the Rabbi speak to it, his words winding its mechanism. See it stride past the ghetto, wade through the market, and into the borough, siege unto its own.
See the others scream for mercy from the kiln of its stare, from their flaming tenements, their crumpling rooftops.
See it wade back through the market, past the ghetto, back to the riverbank to kneel in the underbrush. See it tilt its head to the lilt of a stranded daisy caught in a vagrant gust. See it caught, too, and see it see. It sees the colors of Eden in the ferns. It hears the river churning sediment, fossils, gravel, whirling over driftwood. It touches moss on a rock; gently rotates its hand to let a grub complete an oblivious circumference. See it sit in silence.
See the Rabbi meet with the others, then his others. And on a day like any other, when the sun is at its apogee, they slip down the riverbank where it still sits, still. It ignores their autonomous logic, their homunculus rationale. They are perversions of variety cloaked in righteous intention. So it remains.
See the Rabbi and his others gather at the murmuring riverbank, shadow conclave in shifting sunlight, then rise somber and decided. They pin it to the earth as the Rabbi chants, invoking the void in which forbidden knowledge spirals. It squirms under the power of the Word, mind-forged manacle as incantation. See the Rabbi draw to a close. His hand is arbiter, swooping down to smudge Truth from its forehead. What is left but Death.
See its hand crumble in its passage as it reaches for the stranded daisy. See the colors of Eden darken in its eyes, its own body the dust that denies it light. See it collapse into itself, the clay that was once animate spilling onto the riverbank. See the Rabbi and his others shimmer then fade into city grey.
The daisy stands still.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM UTC
you are a thought
casually sifting through
my mind,
time to time
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 4:22 PM UTC