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Meghan O'Neill Aug 2014
Sometimes i wish i was a silkworm
so that i could weave something beautiful
out of nothingness
and wrap myself up when i feel lonely
or scared.
Sometimes i want
oh so badly
to feel a lover's hand in my hair
just give me a sign
two tugs so i know you're there
i just want to make sure.
I am like a silkworm
because the thread i hang from
is so fine and fragile
but when woven together with more
we are strong.
I'm so scared that without you
I'll snap
I'll fall.
Hell, maybe i'll even cut myself down
and just walk away
unscathed.
unscathed?
i think not.
life is far too ******* us
to leave anyone unscathed.
from the moment we emerge into this world
the weight starts to set in
that's why babies cry so **** much
that's why i used to care so much
but what's the use.
once everything's gone to ****
you might as well enjoy
dangling
and watching the chaos ensue.
we are all ruined
we are all so broken
and ******
and that what makes it nice.
we are all ruined together
we've woven a fine tapestry of disaster
we spin destruction.
the destruction of innocence
the destruction of silence
the destruction of perfectly good bonfires
but that's what makes it nice.
We weave a web of bad choices
we like to pretend that we are spiders
we like to pretend that they're afraid of us.
but they still hold on to the illusion of calm
they think they can control us
conform us
or destroy us
and we play along because it's easiest that way
they can see us
and they are seeing a lie
because we are too cowardly to show them the inside
to spill our guts in the name of honesty
and confess our sins
to cut our silkworm threads
and trade our saturday nights
for shackles
because we are tangled up
in a spider web of lies
but it's nice
and i like feeling invisible sometimes
it helps ease your worries
if no one can place the blame
because it's not easy to find
someone so perfectly wrapped up
in a silkworm thread cocoon:
the only thing that holds me together.
i'm happy to be falling apart
i'm so happy to be dangling.
But sometimes i need you to give me a sign
two tugs on my silkworm thread
to let me know you're here
and i'll cut myself down
so beautifully ruined.
Kiernan Norman Oct 2012
I
There is a 3% chance I'll find you here. But if in each pair of eyes I dip, I find 1/8 of you; I'll be there soon.

II
I didn't crawl here; I took a plane. I spent six hours tracing the Atlantic from my window and you rose from the sea, dry and unsalted, twice each nautical mile. I would say it was my imagination, or the California wine, but I wear glasses now and never lie about what I see. It was you. And you and you and you.


III
Stealing is easier here. Maybe it's the crowds or the way the men smile at me like I'm harmless, but my hands move without question. They don't fumble or miss pockets, my heartbeat doesn't even protest. In prayer beads, silkworm cocoons, oils and sea rings, I am in debt to a city who doesn't know it.


IV
I have no ethnicity. Deep in bone coils the apathy and flight of someone's non-heritage. But I am forgiven; in a world of paranoia, brown eyes are always trusted and the way my hair falls reminds them that I'm on their side. Even my name curls within itself, folded flat and dead before it's over. It's better this way; no allegiance, no responsibility.

V
From a curb in district nine, I see your star. It's hanging where you said it would be but I can't see god in it the way you promised.

VI
On the other side of the world you told me about a quad of green. You waxed flowers of every color, the sky I've only ever painted and the people, beautiful and dark, who will save me. I found it. In broken French and broken sandals I found it and the sun was setting and you had just left. So now we both know you won't be the one to save me.

VII
With one foot in the slanting gutter I walk until the city circles and I'm back where I started. In a daydream I found you. I smiled and quoted your book, the part that said 'When we heard the guidance, we believed in it' and you looked at me in a way that scared me. A way that translated your face into thousands of alphabets, ancient and invented. And I knew none of them. Suddenly I'm illiterate to you. Suddenly I'm gone.

VIII
I'm with a man who's made of smoke and each strawberry ring that escapes my lips is dedicated to someone that I’ve laughed with.

IX
With the intensity of archives on fire, I withdraw. You are still a body; a few hundred bones calcified and aging, a mind of words streaming like spider webs, blood you never shed, and  muscles that cross in blinding precision, but you are not who you used to be. You bound to me in a way that's irreversible and now we're both stitching. Awkward and broken we pull at flesh to remove each other. We have scars now, like stickers ripped from wallpaper. The outline of a palm stains my shoulder, a thumb the size of yours in the crook of my elbow. Small, white fingerprints tattoo your neck.


X
I might be free. Over cobble stones with broken sandals I don't trip until I realize that a city where I loved is now part of me. I can get as far away from her as the modern map allows but the red and gold bangles that crowd my wrists are not to be taken off. They're a part of me too. Like blood spilled on a cobble stone, you will walk over us every day of your life.
written January 2008. Seventeen.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
perchance an epic was necessary, to consolidate the scattered thinking, and indeed, once a certain life, and was lived with a cherishing heart, the heart broke, and life turned from adventures to a more studious approach, and in here, a comfort was found, never before imagined explorations - of course sometime a tourist in the arts does come, but such tourists quickly fade, and the pursuit becomes more enshrined - to levitated towards epics is perhaps the sole reason for the cherished memory of some - and how quickly all can revolve around a searched for theme, after many incorporations were minded - as one to have travelled the Mediterranean, another to have been eaten by the great mandarin silkworm of the library of Kangxi - heading along the silk route with spices - indeed the great mandarin silkworm of the library of emperor Kangxi; as i too needed a bearing - to inspect the trickster of lore and the godly blacksmith of the north.

by instruction - an accumulation of the the zephyrs
into a vector, headed north,
toward the gluttonous murk of ice, jesting
with aches to the bulging and mesmerised crescendo
of adrift stars captured in the tilting away -
to think of an epic, to keep out-of-time of
spontaneity and thistle like swiftness in the last
days of summer, that Mercury brings the new
tides of the tetravivaldis -
   brought by the λoγος of a γoλας -
for reasons that satisfy the suntan copper of
the ***** - the λoγος of a γoλας - yet not toward
Monte Carlo or any hideout of money well invested
and greedily spent for a charm -
no, north bids me welcome from afar -
this norðri fløkja, this    ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ -
by my estimate, i could not take the nonsense
of numerology of a certain specialisation,
i took what was necessary, i pillaged the temple
of Solomon, perhaps that the dome of the rock
might stand - with its glistening dome and
its sapphire mosaics - i don't belong among
palm trees and date trees - hence i turned to
deciphering and subsequently encrypting -
as i have already with *ᚱᚨᛒᛖ
:
the journey of an Æsir through a birch forest
on a horse.
                    with this method in mind:
(a) ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       (b) ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ:

(a)
the need to acquire possessions accumulating
into an estate, is a journey encountered
day by day, although a journey on ice

(b)
cattle only thrive near water,
auruchs did not, and hence illuminated
their way to extinction,
         by way of the Æsirs' harvest
(to eat up diversity of life, and create
a godless world of man).

my escape route came from ᚠ - mirroring שִׂ
although the former standing, the latter sitting
down, although the former fathomable
to my pleasure, the latter unfathomable
to ascribe numbers to letters for patterns -
i seek no patterns, hence my sight turned to
the northern sights, and meanings amplified.
                
the greeks were intended to explore abstracts,
having stated a triangle
they invented the ² symbol and what not,
it was because
they didn't bother extracting a phonetic unit
from something definite,
they classified such endeavours barbarian,
what reasonable greek of 13% reason and
87% reality would extract alpha from
the sound you made when
saying ansur (ᚨᚾᛋᚢᚱ) - i.e. attention -
i.e. deriving a definite sound differentiation
for alphabetical rubrics from a definite thing
(in whatever classification that might be)?
the greeks used the alphabetical rubric of
crafting a definite sound from an indefinite thing,
so they said: acronym, aardvark, assumption,
                       α                 α      α     α,
then they said α² - there are no antonyms -
but indeed there were, hence the Trojan nation
settling in the boot, that's Italy,
the Romans escalated the greek theory
beyond taking out a definite sound distinguished
from other distinguishable sounds,
abstracting what the alphabetic sound assured
a list under alpha: assumption, advantage,
acorn, etc. -
the latins were the first atomist after the greeks,
the greeks believed in atoms, but had no
microscopes to prove atoms existed,
such scientific faith found no parallel;
the latins ensured this was true,
ending with castrato sing-along -
the latins furthered abstracting sounds from
definite orientation which the greeks did
working from ice into iota,
the latins just sang i, i, i -
of course chiral behaviourism of such dissection
emerged - hatch a plan, plan a chisel -
it's very piquant i mind to let you know -
the greeks abstracted nouns in order to create
the alphabet, the barbarians still used
proper nouns to speak proper, the greeks
thus created synonyms and antonyms to add
to the spice of life - after all,
not deriving definite alphas from
cursors that acknowledged points of origins
created diacritical stressing like comma and
semis of colon and macron, not deriving them
from definite things, shunning a helpful
vocabulary bank to an unhelpful vocabulary
banked: synonyms and antonyms the Gemini's
birth of rhetoric;
but the latins were rejected with their atomic theory
of pronunciation, since they became laden
with diacritics - punctuation marks of a different sort,
you can measure a man sprint one hundred metres,
but is that also measuring a man to say
mān or män or mán? i know that the slavic ó = u
given the scalpel opening the ensō to craft a parabola -
but it's not necessarily an accent debate
but a punctuation debate... the emergence of
the diacritic symbols above the letters is due
partly to their joy of the popes listening to
castrato operas and the fact that the romans
went too far... hence the chiral nature of certain
symbols when dittoing - the barbarians used
definite things to assert definite sounds -
the greeks used indefinite things to assert definite
sounds - mind you, if the romans became too
abstract with their little units that became engraved
with punctual accenting, then the greek letters
became laden with scientific constants as necessarily
fathered, unchanging in the pursuit of Heraclitus' flux -
for example... Pythagoras and the hypotenuse:
                            σ / κ² = α² + β² -
           or?
                             c² (ć) = a² (ą) + b² / š (bubble beep
                                                           bop barman backup hop
                                                           of shackled kakah
                                                           or systematic oscillation
                                                           for bzz via burp);
πρ² is still more stable
                                 than what the latin alphabet allows -
hence why greek phonetic encoding was used in
science, and latin phonetic encoding was used in music,
can't be one or the other - added to the fact that
latin encoding had too many spare holes with
the evolution of numbers, and greek didn't have them,
hence β-reduction in lambda calculus and F-dur and A#

the one variant of the grapheme (æ) they didn't include
among expressions: graphite and grapheme
was the variant - gravitating to an entombing
of the excess aesthetic - geresh stress -
somehow the twins match-up to a single womb:
àé vs. áè: V vs. Λ - Copernicus wrote over all
of this with the flat earth uselessness
in terms of navigation - flat earth is useless...
huh? flat earth is the only system that gave
Columbus the chance to explore the new world -
no flat earth no Columbus -
that satellite named Luna was no tool
in navigating across the Atlantic - believe me
i'm sure -
                  or that grapheme (æ) varied like statistics
or like the characters in the book of genesis
that famous adam und eve (kim and kanye):
chances came, chances went:
it was still a draw on the tongue tied decipher:
àè and áé proved another notation for plurality
was necessary, not at the beginning of the word,
but after, hence the possessive article 's,
we could have parallelism, there was a crux,
how once the chiselling of letters came about,
more economic to chisel in a V than a U,
both the same, much easier though...
almost barbaric i might say...
sigma (Σ) enigma rune e (ᛖ) - this compass
is a ******* berserker, god knows if it's
mount Everest or the Bermuda Δ

but one thing is for certain, never you mind how
a language is taught unless you mind it,
not that conversational athenian is really what
i'm aiming at - but a lesson is a lesson nonetheless,
out of interest something new,
richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi,
and what preceded him, namely pan-slavism,
just when the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
did a little Judaic trick of its own,
although snorkelling in the waters of not writing
history for less a time than israel -
you can't beat ~2000 under water - although
you could if your little tribe had an einstein
among them, or proust or spinoza, then
you could effectively become a whale, popping
an individual out from the rubble to say a polite
'hello' and 'when will the dessert be served?'
but indeed, learning a language on your own,
how to learn from scratch, the greek orthography,
and why omicron and not omega,
the give-away? sigma - purely aesthetic reason,
                             νoμισματων

                             nomismaton

omicron                                                 omega

                 you write omicron at the front
                 and omega at the back
                 pivot letter? two: σ     μ &
                 νoμι-                                -ατων
                      ­                     |
                 anything here  
                 will use o            and anything
                                              here uses ω

alike to sigma:
                          χωρας (choras, i.e. country)

sigma (ς) not sigma (σ), i.e. digitalising languages
without a clear connectivity of letters,
block-a-brick-block-a-brick-digit-digit-digit
you learn that handwriting is gone,
two options, your own aesthetic reasons now,
remember, some paired for the ease of handwritten
flow - digitalised language changes the aesthetics,
you make your own rules (considering exceptions
of oh mega mega, ergo revision -

                                       χoρας,

but still the sigma rule, others esp. o mega
you stamp on them like βλαττια, i.e. cockroaches -
κατσαρίδα                 not         κατςαρίδα

all perfectly clear when you explore plato's
dialogue from the book Θηαετητυς (as you might
have noticed, the epsilon-eta project is still
in the storage room of my imagination) -
but indeed in the dialogue, between socrates
and the "hero" of the book theaetetus -
a sample, without an essay on the theory
of knowledge -
socrates: ...'tell me theaetesus, what is Σ O?'
theaetetus: yes, my reply would be that it is
                    Σ and O.
socrates: so there's your account of the syllable,
                isn't it?
theaetetus: yes.
socrates: all right, then: tell me also what your
                  account of Σ is.
                                                             ­   (etc.
or as some might say, a shrug of the shoulders,
a hmmpf huff puff of hot air, impractical interests
and concerns - well, better the impractical
problems than practical problems, less feet
shuffling and nail-biting moments with your
tail between your legs and an army of
intellectuals working out what went wrong
and how history will solve everything by
the practical problems repeating themselves) -
you know that inane reaction - others would just say
Humphrey Bogart and nonetheless get on with it.

some would claim i was begot a second time,
not in the sixth month period of the aqua-flesh,
how did i actually related to the life aquatic,
for nine months i was taught to hold my breath,
however did this happen?
a miracle of birth? ah indeed the miracle of
a crutch for a woman - spinal deformities -
9 months, sort to speak, in water or some other
fluid - merman - a beastly innovation -
next you'll be telling me beyond this life
we turn into centaurs, given the Koran's promise -
you'd need the appetite of a breeding horse
to satiate the 72 - or thereabouts - martyr or
no martyr - 72? that's pushing it -
or as they say among children - a chance playground
without swings or sandpits, but very careless
gravitational pulling toward a certain direction;
nonetheless, they might have that i did indeed
settle of a sáttmáli                  ᛋᚨᛏᛏᛗᚨᛚᛁ
                  við         ­                  Vᛁᛞ
                  tann                         ᛏᚨᚾᚾ
                  djevul                      ᛞᛃᛖVᚢᛚ -
the hands you see, fidgety -
     hond handa grammur burtur    úr   steðgur
     ᚻᛟᚾᛞ  ᚻᚨᚾᛞᚨ  ᚷᚱᚨᛗᛗᚢᚱ   ᛒᚢᚱᛏᚢᚱ  ᚢᚱ   ᛋᛏᛖᛞᚷᚢᚱ
         the hands give an ardent pursuit
                                                 away from rest -
well not that my poems will ever reach
the islands in question - and indeed an
uneducated guess propels me - what does it matter,
λαλος babbler meant anything, indeed λαλος,
language as my own, is a language that i can
understand - and should anyone omit
disparities - a welcome revision would never tease
nor burn my eyes - but the phonetic omission
peeved me off: woad in water, ventricles in a
variety of entanglements - it's just not there -
and indeed, orthographically, if there are no more
optometric involvements of omicron's twin -
then the stance is with you to use whichever pleases,
i can't tell the difference, unless i was a pedantic
student, aged 70, with a granddaughter i wanted
to be wed teasing a millimetre's worth of
phonetic differentiation between the two -
POTATO PA'H'TAYTOE TOMATO TA'H'MAYTOE -
linguistically one's american and the other
is british, which looks like greek and latin
upside-down and in a mirror: pəˈteɪtəʊ, təˈmɑːtəʊ;
or as the spaghetti gobblers would put it:
the tetragrammaton is working on their
texan drawl (dwah! ripples in china) -
or the high-society new england ******* *******
coo with a cuckoo's load of clocks -
before being sent off to england for a respectable
education, something en route Sylvia Plath -
but not to ol' wee scoot land - ah nay - well
perhaps for a year and then talk of north european
barbarism of a deep friend pizza and mars bar.

and when descartes finished with christina
queen of sweden, she became an animate portrait
of feminine attempts at philosophising,
she was basically ostracised from society,
well, not society per se, she didn't become a stray
dog, but she forgot certain functions of
the upper tier - lazily modern man decides
to hide phenomena from understanding
individual instances, with the kantian guise
of a noumenon, hence cutting his efforts short -
indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by society - only after descartes finished educating her;
and indeed to most people a little bit of sloth
equates to an amputation of some sort -
yet only with the x-files' season 2 episode 2
i've learned of the effects of prolonged alcohol
"misuse", that little boxing match in my liver?
it's not a pain as such, it's actually a hardening
of soft tissue - with prolonged alcohol exposure
soft tissue organs harden, notably the liver -
and it's not a pain, it's a hardening.
but indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by her tier of socialites - i'm glad diogenes
didn't get to her, but then again a bit of cloth
goes a long way this far north -
yet unlike the encounter with napoleon by hegel
diogenes' encounter with alexander lasted longer -
which tells you the old method does no service
to a little bit of material accumulation -
but perhaps the acumen was briefer when you were
ably living in a barrel - and to think, as only
that being the sole expression, not so much
a body without organs as stated in the thesis
of anti-oedipus by deleuze and guattari -
a consideration for a body without limbs - prior
to a footprint an imprint on the mind -
carelessly now, a diarrhoea of narration -
how rare to find it - perhaps this idea of epic
poetry is a default of writing per se -
with this my whatever numbered entry i seize
to find escape in it - a lack of ambition -
a loss of spontaneity that's a demanded mechanisation -
by volume, by inaneness - to reach a single
technique accumulative zenith, and then back
into the ploughing, rustic scenery and the
never-bored animals - i rather forget such escapades -
and there i was dreaming of a grand
runic exploration - some imitable game -
some scenic routes - yet again -
Ronnie Ng Nov 2011
Building a tiny white room around
it where thousands of white threads abound
The threads began as pure, but gradually compound
into a clutter of entanglements that almost drowned
the little silkworm, that it's feeling confounded
by life experiences that were so profound
But soon enough those threads would unbound
on it, a pair of wings would be found
The sudden ability to fly would make it feel spellbound.
Fanfare of northwest wind, a bluejay wind
announces autumn, and the equinox
rolls back blue bays to a far afternoon.
Somewhere beyond the Gorge Li Po is gone,
looking for friendship or an old love's sleeve
or writing letters to his children, lost,
and to his children's children, and to us.
What was his light? of lamp or moon or sun?
Say that it changed, for better or for worse,
sifted by leaves, sifted by snow; on mulberry silk
a slant of witch-light; on the pure text
a slant of genius; emptying mind and heart
for winecups and more winecups and more words.
What was his time? Say that it was a change,
but constant as a changing thing may be,
from chicory's moon-dark blue down the taut scale
to chicory's tenderest pink, in a pink field
such as imagination dreams of thought.
But of the heart beneath the winecup moon
the tears that fell beneath the winecup moon
for children lost, lost lovers, and lost friends,
what can we say but that it never ends?
Even for us it never ends, only begins.
Yet to spell down the poem on her page,
margining her phrases, parsing forth
the sevenfold prism of meaning, up the scale
from chicory pink to blue, is to assume
Li Po himself: as he before assumed
the poets and the sages who were his.
Like him, we too have eaten of the word:
with him are somewhere lost beyond the Gorge:
and write, in rain, a letter to lost children,
a letter long as time and brief as love.

II

And yet not love, not only love. Not caritas
or only that. Nor the pink chicory love,
deep as it may be, even to moon-dark blue,
in which the dragon of his meaning flew
for friends or children lost, or even
for the beloved horse, for Li Po's horse:
not these, in the self's circle so embraced:
too near, too dear, for pure assessment: no,
a letter crammed and creviced, crannied full,
storied and stored as the ripe honeycomb
with other faith than this. As of sole pride
and holy loneliness, the intrinsic face
worn by the always changing shape between
end and beginning, birth and death.
How moves that line of daring on the map?
Where was it yesterday, or where this morning
when thunder struck at seven, and in the bay
the meteor made its dive, and shed its wings,
and with them one more Icarus? Where struck
that lightning-stroke which in your sleep you saw
wrinkling across the eyelid? Somewhere else?
But somewhere else is always here and now.
Each moment crawls that lightning on your eyelid:
each moment you must die. It was a tree
that this time died for you: it was a rock
and with it all its local web of love:
a chimney, spilling down historic bricks:
perhaps a skyful of Ben Franklin's kites.
And with them, us. For we must hear and bear
the news from everywhere: the hourly news,
infinitesimal or vast, from everywhere.

III

Sole pride and loneliness: it is the state
the kingdom rather of all things: we hear
news of the heart in weather of the Bear,
slide down the rungs of Cassiopeia's Chair,
still on the nursery floor, the Milky Way;
and, if we question one, must question all.
What is this 'man'? How far from him is 'me'?
Who, in this conch-shell, locked the sound of sea?
We are the tree, yet sit beneath the tree,
among the leaves we are the hidden bird,
we are the singer and are what is heard.
What is this 'world'? Not Li Po's Gorge alone,
and yet, this too might be. 'The wind was high
north of the White King City, by the fields
of whistling barley under cuckoo sky,'
where, as the silkworm drew her silk, Li Po
spun out his thoughts of us. 'Endless as silk'
(he said) 'these poems for lost loves, and us,'
and, 'for the peachtree, blooming in the ditch.'
Here is the divine loneliness in which
we greet, only to doubt, a voice, a word,
the smoke of a sweetfern after frost, a face
touched, and loved, but still unknown, and then
a body, still mysterious in embrace.
Taste lost as touch is lost, only to leave
dust on the doorsill or an ink-stained sleeve:
and yet, for the inadmissible, to grieve.
Of leaf and love, at last, only to doubt:
from world within or world without, kept out.
  
IV

Caucus of robins on an alien shore
as of the **-** birds at Jewel Gate
southward bound and who knows where and never late
or lost in a roar at sea. Rovers of chaos
each one the 'Rover of Chao,' whose slight bones
shall put to shame the swords. We fly with these,
have always flown, and they
stay with us here, stand still and stay,
while, exiled in the Land of Pa, Li Po
still at the Wine Spring stoops to drink the moon.
And northward now, for fall gives way to spring,
from Sandy Hook and Kitty Hawk they wing,
and he remembers, with the pipes and flutes,
drunk with joy, bewildered by the chance
that brought a friend, and friendship, how, in vain,
he strove to speak, 'and in long sentences,' his pain.
Exiled are we. Were exiles born. The 'far away,'
language of desert, language of ocean, language of sky,
as of the unfathomable worlds that lie
between the apple and the eye,
these are the only words we learn to say.
Each morning we devour the unknown. Each day
we find, and take, and spill, or spend, or lose,
a sunflower splendor of which none knows the source.
This cornucopia of air! This very heaven
of simple day! We do not know, can never know,
the alphabet to find us entrance there.
So, in the street, we stand and stare,
to greet a friend, and shake his hand,
yet know him beyond knowledge, like ourselves;
ocean unknowable by unknowable sand.

V

The locust tree spills sequins of pale gold
in spiral nebulae, borne on the Invisible
earthward and deathward, but in change to find
the cycles to new birth, new life. Li Po
allowed his autumn thoughts like these to flow,
and, from the Gorge, sends word of Chouang's dream.
Did Chouang dream he was a butterfly?
Or did the butterfly dream Chouang? If so,
why then all things can change, and change again,
the sea to brook, the brook to sea, and we
from man to butterfly; and back to man.
This 'I,' this moving 'I,' this focal 'I,'
which changes, when it dreams the butterfly,
into the thing it dreams of; liquid eye
in which the thing takes shape, but from within
as well as from without: this liquid 'I':
how many guises, and disguises, this
nimblest of actors takes, how many names
puts on and off, the costumes worn but once,
the player queen, the lover, or the dunce,
hero or poet, father or friend,
suiting the eloquence to the moment's end;
childlike, or *******; the language of the kiss
sensual or simple; and the gestures, too,
as slight as that with which an empire falls,
or a great love's abjured; these feignings, sleights,
savants, or saints, or fly-by-nights,
the novice in her cell, or wearing tights
on the high wire above a hell of lights:
what's true in these, or false? which is the 'I'
of 'I's'? Is it the master of the cadence, who
transforms all things to a hoop of flame, where through
tigers of meaning leap? And are these true,
the language never old and never new,
such as the world wears on its wedding day,
the something borrowed with something chicory blue?
In every part we play, we play ourselves;
even the secret doubt to which we come
beneath the changing shapes of self and thing,
yes, even this, at last, if we should call
and dare to name it, we would find
the only voice that answers is our own.
We are once more defrauded by the mind.

Defrauded? No. It is the alchemy by which we grow.
It is the self becoming word, the word
becoming world. And with each part we play
we add to cosmic Sum and cosmic sum.
Who knows but one day we shall find,
hidden in the prism at the rainbow's foot,
the square root of the eccentric absolute,
and the concentric absolute to come.

VI

The thousand eyes, the Argus 'I's' of love,
of these it was, in verse, that Li Po wove
the magic cloak for his last going forth,
into the Gorge for his adventure north.
What is not seen or said? The cloak of words
loves all, says all, sends back the word
whether from Green Spring, and the yellow bird
'that sings unceasing on the banks of Kiang,'
or 'from the Green Moss Path, that winds and winds,
nine turns for every hundred steps it winds,
up the Sword Parapet on the road to Shuh.'
'Dead pinetrees hang head-foremost from the cliff.
The cataract roars downward. Boulders fall
Splitting the echoes from the mountain wall.
No voice, save when the nameless birds complain,
in stunted trees, female echoing male;
or, in the moonlight, the lost cuckoo's cry,
piercing the traveller's heart. Wayfarer from afar,
why are you here? what brings you here? why here?'

VII

Why here. Nor can we say why here. The peachtree bough
scrapes on the wall at midnight, the west wind
sculptures the wall of fog that slides
seaward, over the Gulf Stream.
                                                       The rat
comes through the wainscot, brings to his larder
the twinned acorn and chestnut burr. Our sleep
lights for a moment into dream, the eyes
turn under eyelids for a scene, a scene,
o and the music, too, of landscape lost.
And yet, not lost. For here savannahs wave
cressets of pampas, and the kingfisher
binds all that gold with blue.
                                                  Why here? why here?
Why does the dream keep only this, just this C?
Yes, as the poem or the music do?

The timelessness of time takes form in rhyme:
the lotus and the locust tree rehearse
a four-form song, the quatrain of the year:
not in the clock's chime only do we hear
the passing of the Now into the past,
the passing into future of the Now:
hut in the alteration of the bough
time becomes visible, becomes audible,
becomes the poem and the music too:
time becomes still, time becomes time, in rhyme.
Thus, in the Court of Aloes, Lady Yang
called the musicians from the Pear Tree Garden,
called for Li Po, in order that the spring,
tree-peony spring, might so be made immortal.
Li Po, brought drunk to court, took up his brush,
but washed his face among the lilies first,
then wrote the song of Lady Flying Swallow:
which Hsuang Sung, the emperor, forthwith played,
moving quick fingers on a flute of jade.
Who will forget that afternoon? Still, still,
the singer holds his phrase, the rising moon
remains unrisen. Even the fountain's falling blade
hangs in the air unbroken, and says: Wait!

VIII

Text into text, text out of text. Pretext
for scholars or for scholiasts. The living word
springs from the dying, as leaves in spring
spring from dead leaves, our birth from death.
And all is text, is holy text. Sheepfold Hill
becomes its name for us, anti yet is still
unnamed, unnamable, a book of trees
before it was a book for men or sheep,
before it was a book for words. Words, words,
for it is scarlet now, and brown, and red,
and yellow where the birches have not shed,
where, in another week, the rocks will show.
And in this marriage of text and thing how can we know
where most the meaning lies? We climb the hill
through bullbriar thicket and the wild rose, climb
past poverty-grass and the sweet-scented bay
scaring the pheasant from his wall, but can we say
that it is only these, through these, we climb,
or through the words, the cadence, and the rhyme?
Chang Hsu, calligrapher of great renown,
needed to put but his three cupfuls down
to tip his brush with lightning. On the scroll,
wreaths of cloud rolled left and right, the sky
opened upon Forever. Which is which?
The poem? Or the peachtree in the ditch?
Or is all one? Yes, all is text, the immortal text,
Sheepfold Hill the poem, the poem Sheepfold Hill,
and we, Li Po, the man who sings, sings as he climbs,
transposing rhymes to rocks and rocks to rhymes.
The man who sings. What is this man who sings?
And finds this dedicated use for breath
for phrase and periphrase of praise between
the twin indignities of birth and death?
Li Yung, the master of the epitaph,
forgetting about meaning, who himself
had added 'meaning' to the book of >things,'
lies who knows where, himself sans epitaph,
his text, too, lost, forever lost ...
                                                         And yet, no,
text lost and poet lost, these only flow
into that other text that knows no year.
The peachtree in the poem is still here.
The song is in the peachtree and the ear.

IX

The winds of doctrine blow both ways at once.
The wetted finger feels the wind each way,
presaging plums from north, and snow from south.
The dust-wind whistles from the eastern sea
to dry the nectarine and parch the mouth.
The west wind from the desert wreathes the rain
too late to fill our wells, but soon enough,
the four-day rain that bears the leaves away.
Song with the wind will change, but is still song
and pierces to the rightness in the wrong
or makes the wrong a rightness, a delight.
Where are the eager guests that yesterday
thronged at the gate? Like leaves, they could not stay,
the winds of doctrine blew their minds away,
and we shall have no loving-cup tonight.
No loving-cup: for not ourselves are here
to entertain us in that outer year,
where, so they say, we see the Greater Earth.
The winds of doctrine blow our minds away,
and we are absent till another birth.

X

Beyond the Sugar Loaf, in the far wood,
under the four-day rain, gunshot is heard
and with the falling leaf the falling bird
flutters her crimson at the huntsman's foot.
Life looks down at death, death looks up at life,
the eyes exchange the secret under rain,
rain all the way from heaven: and all three
know and are known, share and are shared, a silent
moment of union and communion.
Have we come
this way before, and at some other time?
Is it the Wind Wheel Circle we have come?
We know the eye of death, and in it too
the eye of god, that closes as in sleep,
giving its light, giving its life, away:
clouding itself as consciousness from pain,
clouding itself, and then, the shutter shut.
And will this eye of god awake again?
Or is this what he loses, loses once,
but always loses, and forever lost?
It is the always and unredeemable cost
of his invention, his fatigue. The eye
closes, and no other takes its place.
It is the end of god, each time, each time.

Yet, though the leaves must fall, the galaxies
rattle, detach, and fall, each to his own
perplexed and individual death, Lady Yang
gone with the inkberry's vermilion stalk,
the peony face behind a fan of frost,
the blue-moon eyebrow behind a fan of rain,
beyond recall by any alchemist
or incantation from the Book of Change:
unresumable, as, on Sheepfold Hill,
the fir cone of a thousand years ago:
still, in the loving, and the saying so,
as when we name the hill, and, with the name,
bestow an essence, and a meaning, too:
do we endow them with our lives?
They move
into another orbit: into a time
not theirs: and we become the bell to speak
this time: as we become new eyes
with which they see, the voice
in which they find duration, short or long,
the chthonic and hermetic song.
Beyond Sheepfold Hill,
gunshot again, the bird flies forth to meet
predestined death, to look with conscious sight
into the eye of light
the light unflinching that understands and loves.
And Sheepfold Hill accepts them, and is still.

XI

The landscape and the language are the same.
And we ourselves are language and are land,
together grew with Sheepfold Hill, rock, and hand,
and mind, all taking substance in a thought
wrought out of mystery: birdflight and air
predestined from the first to be a pair:
as, in the atom, the living rhyme
invented her divisions, which in time,
and in the terms of time, would make and break
the text, the texture, and then all remake.
This powerful mind that can by thinking take
the order of the world and all remake,
w
Marshall Gass Aug 2014
power rises in the production
deep in intangible factories
churning digestive juices into valuable
spittle
extracted through death in a warm bowl
battling with tweezers and collected
in spools to make silken wonders

for this you lived on leaves
gorged on mulberry
to vanish in a pillowcase
silkscarf, maybe a tie
poor thing whoever discovered
your intestinal value

give up your secrets
gut wrenching rainbows of delight.
man knows how to breed you for himself
somehow.

Author Notes

silk production happens this way.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 5 days ago
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
it's not the case of irrationality with the usage of pronouns as a way of being assertive away from the existentialist dittoing of the pronouns; even if i utilise the pronoun to be a noun or a verb via dittoing, with the framework of an esp. exemplar "irrationality," i am still, after all, the speaker of the noun and verbs, and the keeper of them; i am not irrational to the extent that i ditto myself outside of other categorisations of words, since dittoing myself within the pronoun category opens the accusation that i use all other words with ambiguity while allowing no moral ambiguity into my actions - but there is a clear morality to the use of words as the worthwhile exchange of meaning, in newtonian sense in the least and foremost not going beyond the dropped stone or insinuation of passerby engagement into games - but clear crisp cut - silk scarf tagged twelve quid was sold on the haggle for ten quid - so that haggling wasn't an ambiguity, but the price of the scarf was! so how many sexualised insinuations have i heard with impromptu to no action?! too many! all of them declassified from furthering action because of too much innuendo and nuance of that famous disguised dialectics lost - known as the death of god. cartesian in existentialist terms, thinking presupposed as the notation via "i." thought no longer as an existential certainty... but because of the dittoing of pronouns... an... ambiguity! well it was originally an ambiguity, but why excess pausing to counter? the english are a nation of shopkeepers... yes... and the french are a bunch of nosy café patrons with rude lovers disguised as bartenders muscle aching to munch the next croissant in drag and feel sexed up gagging.

verum, ego scribere similis rumi*; scribbles and similitude -
worth an afghan worth of eyes in syria for an afghan girl
saying to her loved up something or other:
see it come back, god forbid you hear the calculative laugh
of augustus on the way back, just while europe resigns from involving
the remnant slavs like libyans or syrians or hebrews in the original format
of strength: let the hebrews deal with them
in their own vatican - we need to curb north africans
and the mid-middle-eastern olives
when taking over the northern peoples for economic harvests.
but then the madman laughed without ordinance and impunity -
he laughed augustus' rationalism into the grave of choking chock fudge brussels
with spare tonsils eating nothing but cauliflower and lard -
elsewhere in movie via ghent; or was it in bruges or
was it in brussels starring jean claude van damme?
i call it... writers went mad on excess phonetics never readied
or introduced - except with magritte wearing a diaper
rather than a full james bond when painting.
i heard it was a proper heist to keep the police numbers handy,
i had it all tanned in argumentation for hued brown in the nordic
special; oddly enough no nordic special sailed for a sinking of the vasa
with predestination - airport was nice - we argued then -
we're not a continent of north harmonicas with jokes
between mythological four lead clovers and oak real canada threesomes.
well i was a continent with croatian and scandinavian,
i'm not originally a mc donald continent - although that 'MADE IN CHINA'
helps to resolve all future wars with the silkworm beginning:
rodeo in the haven of horse's burp and fall of the cheap spain due to tourism -
old continental had corrida - new continent has rodeo -
somewhere between the ****** and maidens came oceans elves for a bet on
who could write a horse out from riding into a blunt metal clasp of stirrup eager sounds:
or a twenty aged colt sounding like an eighty year old nail wrinkled with rust hammered.
blunt metal won, horse gasped for air, the ***** was taken home with stitches,
the maiden was taken home with a groom in stitches also, although
stitches of old age prior asked for in her meringue dress to suit: wrinkles;
but hey! there's **** in between! who's the loser, the aviator or the aqua puncture of thought?
but still augustus laughed it off with nero on the waiting list of possible re-encounters;
israel received the southern cicero of the roman empire,
while the rekindled empire got the north-eastern and northern part of
the unexplored without saints travelling elsewhere,
and for that it got implosions, with the schengen approval reminded
to cloister the leftists eager to holiday in syria on unesco cruises in sand and sheep ****
of kept marble - for that cocktail party convo, and next day article in the new yorker;
shame on you for using children to ploy en masse morality of guilt
to later reproduce the hydra with so much racist cribbing
of a seahorse riddling perpetual dynamos
as to imagine the future cot rock-a-baby-jihadi saladin:
the fire is in his own house, runs with a
              flaming matchstick to his "neighbour's house"
to start the fire rather than trying to put the fire out in his own house.
honestly? sounds a bit binary in bangladeshi.
david badgerow Nov 2011
i emerged from a dark cave
a hole in the ground by a tree
bare feet dragging behind me
dressed in shreds of cotton and silkworm fibers
wearing dirt on my cheeks and twitching hands
i was drenched in sweat and malnutrition
Whoe’er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;

Where’er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;

Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my absent kisses.

I wish her beauty,
That owes not all its duty
To gaudy tire, or glist’ring shoe-tie;

Something more than
Taffata or tissue can,
Or rampant feather, or rich fan;

More than the spoil
Of shop, or silkworm’s toil,
Or a bought blush, or a set smile.

A face that’s best
By its own beauty drest,
And can alone commend the rest:

A face made up
Out of no other shop
Than what nature’s white hand sets ope.

A cheek where youth
And blood with pen of truth
Write what the reader sweetly ru’th.

A cheek where grows
More than a morning rose,
Which to no box his being owes.

Lips, where all day
A lovers kiss may play,
Yet carry nothing thence away.

Looks that oppress
Their richest tires, but dress
And clothe their simplest nakedness.

Eyes, that displaces
The neighbour diamond, and outfaces
That sunshine by their own sweet graces.

Tresses, that wear
Jewels, but to declare
How much themselves more precious are;

Whose native ray
Can tame the wanton day
Of gems that in their bright shades play.

Each ruby there,
Or pearl that dare appear,
Be its own blush, be its own tear.

A well-tamed heart,
For whose more noble smart
Love may be long choosing a dart.

Eyes, that bestow
Full quivers on Love’s bow,
Yet pay less arrows than they owe.

Smiles, that can warm
The blood, yet teach a charm,
That chastity shall take no harm.

Blushes, that bin
The burnish of no sin,
Nor flames of aught too hot within.

Joyes, that confess
Virtue their mistress,
And have no other head to dress.

Fears, fond and flight
As the coy bride’s when night
First does the longing lover right.

Tears, quickly fled
And vain as those are shed
For a dying maidenhead.

Days, that need borrow
No part of their good morrow
From a forspent night of sorrow.

Days, that, in spite
Of darkness, by the light
Of a clear mind are day all night.

Nights, sweet as they,
Made short by lovers’ play,
Yet long by th’ absence of the day.

Life, that dares send
A challenge to its end,
And when it comes say Welcome Friend.

Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old winter’s head with flowers.

Soft silken hours,
Open suns, shady bowers
‘Bove all; nothing within that lours.

Whate’er delight
Can make day’s forehead bright,
Or give down to the wings of night.

In her whole frame
Have nature all the name,
Art and ornament the shame.

Her flattery
Picture and poesy,
Her counsel her own virtue be.

I wish her store
Of worth may leave her poor
Of wishes; and I wish—no more.

Now, if Time knows
That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows;

Her, whose just bays
My future hopes can raise,
A trophy to her present praise;

Her, that dares be
What these lines wish to see:
I seek no further, it is she.

’Tis she, and here
Lo! I unclothe and clear
My wishes’ cloudy character.

May she enjoy it,
Whose merit dare apply it,
But modesty dares still deny it!

Such worth as this is
Shall fix my flying wishes,
And determine them to kisses.

Let her full glory,
My fancies, fly before ye;
Be ye my fictions, but her story.
Onoma Nov 2011
Muck bit her ivory nightgown, as if earth hungering
after her...the delicate collapse of a napkin,she.
Hours poured atop her head, her shaggy, silvery
mane suspended--its reluctant bounce captured
at midpoint...as a spiderweb under ultraviolet light.
Desert sands lost in contemplation, reminiscent of
her flesh--divulge her core as she sleeps in a
fetal position.
Her body spasms awkwardly...its will visibly slowed
from initial motion.
As the paralysis experienced by prey amid the astral
annals of nightmares.
She'll rise into that shine, wonder at the nightmare's
symbology...talk to her garden--whilst thinking of her
time to come.


Silkworm breached the parcel
of time, its cocooned inertia
coarsed through the opalescent
eye of God to Godhood.
Of time's ruination redeemed
in a solitary work...cupped
airless the unbridled form of
a trapezist spent itself.
Opened and closed somersaults
atripped a piece of said space...
nothingness regenerated to
move, to take step of itself.
A self-argumentative abstraction
glowed...undid its silken flag--
firmly planted in an undiscovered
region...her time come.
Daisy May Mar 2015
A silkworm made my purse so fine,
yet a tiny fly has ruined my wine.
Mike Arms Mar 2012
The excavations on serpent scaled cliffs !
Close to the cirrus !
Here
Blind wings must labor for
****** adventure
They spin like silkworm into language holes.
Jayantee Khare Dec 2017

Mind can be a Spider ...

Swinging between the things
Spinning a web of threads
Elastic thin intricate
To hunt food for self
Or end up eating itself...

~One can be a think tank
Stuck, but no outcome

Or

Mind can be a Silkworm as well..

Confined in darkness
Spinning a cocoon of fibres
Strong lustrous fine
To be weaved into
Useful valuable fabric...

~One can be a writer
weaving words twined with thoughts
into beautiful write

Just a thought to ponder upon....
Michael Ryan Apr 2015
A silkworm burrows through the building
creating narrow passages for the many to follow.
A path designed to teach them how to live,
as it slithers through each hallway
it spews out gray compost for the people to thrive on.

Mindlessly this creature repeats it's pattern knowing no better;
each corridor the same blend of dreadful and brain dead.
Beneath it the muddled mix of moss green and **** brown tiles
symmetrical caverns line it's domain as feeding homes for the children.

Third stage monstrosities recycle what they have ate for the young
what they seek is what they are losing the longer they feast.
Their lust for creativity and a sense of humanity fades with each nibble
minds that were ever able of change become part of the cycle.

Ripe with potential until swallowed by the worm
losing their limbs: Hands that could have sculpted new halls,
feet that could have spread the news "to escape while you can",
and their minds for the future can only relish in repetition .

They themselves become part of the system of life--
where rotten fruits of thought are absorbed and digested by all.
The struggle for survival of the fittest
becomes the fight to find your own knowledge,
keeping your mind fresh and alive.
Education/Society really needs people to take a step out of what was implanted into them and learn from the past not repeat it.  It's about growth and improvement not about just doing it all over again.
Kiernan Norman Sep 2014
I
There is a 3% chance I'll find you here. But if in each pair of eyes I dip, I find 1/8 of you; I'll be there soon.

II
I didn't crawl here; I took a plane. I spent six hours tracing the Atlantic from my window and you rose from the sea, dry and unsalted, twice each nautical mile. I would say it was my imagination, or the California wine, but I wear glasses now and never lie about what I see. It was you. And you and you and you.


III
Stealing is easier here. Maybe it's the crowds or the way the men smile at me like I'm harmless, but my hands move without question. They don't fumble or miss pockets, my heartbeat doesn't even protest. In prayer beads, silkworm cocoons, oils and sea rings, I am in debt to a city who doesn't know it.


IV
I have no ethnicity. Deep in bone coils the apathy and flight of someone's non-heritage. But I am forgiven; in a world of paranoia, brown eyes are always trusted and the way my hair falls reminds them that I'm on their side. Even my name curls within itself, folded flat and dead before it's over. It's better this way; no allegiance, no responsibility.

V
From a curb in district nine, I see your star. It's hanging where you said it would be but I can't see god in it the way you promised.

VI
On the other side of the world you told me about patch of green. You waxed flowers of every color, the sky I've only ever painted and the people, beautiful and dark, who will save me. I found it. In broken French and broken sandals I found it and the sun was setting and you had just left. So now we both know you won't be the one to save me.

VII
With one foot in the slanting gutter I walk until the city circles and I'm back where I started. In a daydream I found you. I smiled and quoted your book, the part that said 'When we heard the guidance, we believed in it' and you looked at me in a way that scared me. A way that translated your face into thousands of alphabets, ancient and invented. And I knew none of them. Suddenly I'm illiterate to you. Suddenly I'm gone.

VIII
I'm with a man who's made of smoke and each strawberry ring that escapes my lips is dedicated to someone that I’ve laughed with.

IX
With the intensity of archives on fire, I withdraw. You are still a body; a few hundred bones calcified and aging, a mind of words streaming like spider webs, blood you never shed, and  muscles that cross in blinding precision, but you are not who you used to be. You bound to me in a way that's irreversible and now we're both stitching. Awkward and broken we pull at flesh to remove each other. We have scars now, like stickers ripped from wallpaper. The outline of a palm stains my shoulder, a thumb the size of yours in the crook of my elbow. Small, white fingerprints tattoo your neck.


X**
I might be free. Over cobble stones with broken sandals I don't trip until I realize that a city where I loved is now part of me. I can get as far away from her as the modern map allows but the red and gold bangles that crowd my wrists are not to be taken off. They're a part of me too. Like blood spilled on a cobble stone, you will walk over us every day of your life.
written January 2008. I was seventeen. Still my favorite piece of writing.
akr Aug 2011
The net is finer than the spider or silkworm's.
Curling, it catches and flares here and there,
grazing down the ribcage of this world
and occupying all spaces, tenderly.

It has come from the farthest places
where a star has passed into senescence
and no light remains.

In August the silver maples
flip and wave backsides of their leaves,
chiming and tinkling under its protection.

So much air and light
has looped through the beaks of birds
and pulled them down from flight.

Departure is what the speaker inhabits.
A self turning photograph
pulling away during the taking.
But slightly over-saturated,
full of the green turned gold.

The earth will become bald white again,
faultless and raked by the winds.
For now, the net slackens out
over the borders of woods
and resting in treetops, safe to be viewed.

A hawk drifting,
turns over the topography of the day's catch
in his eye.

Shadows close like open waters.
But the low and unending dilation of cricket song
of this month plays well beyond dusk.

Hear it extending into you
like delicate limbs
to enter the ear.
Lorraine DeSousa Apr 2015
Once I understood the cry of the gull,



And why the hibiscus flowers for one day.



And I could sense the caterpillar’s anticipation



As he broke free from the cocoon in which he lay.



And I knew why the silkworm ate the mulberry tree,



And the tiger chose stripes instead of spots.



And I understood why the dolphin never sleeps,



And why the python tied himself in knots.



And I could speak the language of the honey bee



And converse with the grizzly bear



For I understood this infinite universe



And why I was here and not there.



But life takes away this deep comprehension



This understanding that we each have inside



Because when we try to comprehend as we are



We are all searching from the wrong side.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2016
when i see postmen delivering letters,
                                   i think they feel ashamed
of having a poet among them rise
to such global prominence,
i could end right now and have reached
an Urban II pulpit, just as he
was getting started...
  i used to admire Mr. Know-how for a time
out of sympathy... but then that slowly died,
only because i found people who
had some respect for learning to tie
their shoelaces, and spell words...
      it turned out to be the most abhorring
form of rebellion,
       i could have written all possible
synonyms of red in acronym, just to
make the use of the thesaurus made for
better use... or said ultra-acronym
variations or red, like: crying-mason...
and you would have hopefully said crimson...
  but let me be clear... he got my attention
in Glasgow... but after a while...
    even if i had a cradle of appeal
i might come off as lousy...
               but still, when i read him write
like this needed to be a dyslexic statement,
i thought he might write something illuminating
in hieroglyphics...
           i wish i had a respect for not spelling
words correctly... grammar **** or not...
                    there's no point playing with genes
if you're not creating a plateau on
the internal organs of fathomability...
  genese don't necessarily translate into memes...
     people with a perfect good set of genes
will only still be football players...
        just gagging for a concussion to show-off
their Achilles bravery... i have heroic
   drinking battles, no one bothers to celebrate
new year's day with me... i found out
the hard way: even the brothels aren't open
on new year's day these day, as Auden might
have predicted, all the lonely hearts go to...
oh right... perhaps it was the male-on-male
orientated brothels that worked throughout the year...
  after a while it's not that you despise the body
for all its necessarily purposes,
      but after a while, the body does so little
that the niqab does so much more,
    after a while the head wearing a kippah
does so little aisatsu, that you start to ridicule
the practice as an excuse to headbang at a rock
concert in a maggot pit...
after a while the hair does so little that the hijab does
so much more...
                  can you imagine a Mongol inventing
a hijab? horse-skin ****** wrapped around your
head... thank god for the silk road and the silkworm
produce from china, or wool from the shepherding
states...
             otherwise? a ******* tragedy...
    it's also true in reverse... buddha curled his
******* using the thumb... but he bluffed
the sign-language and necessarily pokered that one
into sign-language saying: down the middle!
           we had sundials and clepsydras for a reason,
as we also had libras, for a reason.
            should i fear a man with only one book?
or should i fear a beast with only one "word"?
  well, these days the former is true,
    but when lions said more than men in terms
of authority... could could complain it wasn't so?
  let's just imagine, that whatever we write today
will not reach a heritage status of the paintings
in the Lascaux caves.. well-brokered that statement...
since an african mask carved into an Baobab
by a shaman will fetch much more worth
at a tribal convention, than a african mask
enshrined into confusing a baobab with an Acacia
fetch at a gordon gekko's winning prize
for the most caviar rather than sushi being ate.
the point is... i was just thinking of writing a short
introduction to an actual poem i intended...
                   you never expect such things to happen,
esp. given you just escaped building the pyramids
safely rooted in masonry, and having to
     wield some Atlantean imagination
for the hanging gardens of Babylon...
to be later told: oh don't worry, we have people
to build as a colliseum, you stick you
to intellectualism of the four letters...
   and then jesus comes along and about a billion
people are rounded-up talking about salvation
by reading only one book, saved by complicating
only reading this one book, by stating
how many times certain words are used in them,
to ensure everyone after Moses can plagiarise
ancient Egyptian into contemporary Hebrew
(only when Charles II can speak Bulgarian or
Romanian)...            horrid numerology...
oh! oh! there are 20 references to the word pray
in the bible! it must mean something!
   how about? bla blah bla blah....
well... d'uh! blay and blaw: Otis Redding (doughnut /
       ice-cream man)
                               and        Sam Cooke
(don't know much about hissing tories)
    so true too, turns out Abel (blay) was also known
as clay.... even though Cain was the vegetarian...
   so that makes Cain (blaw) the god-wind when
Cain slaughtered Abel and the earth unearth
      a curse that made Cain into a nomad and less and less
into a vegetarian... ah, the Scoots buckled and backed me
up on whether blaw came with the lyrics
      son of a preacherman, and whether my
    rubric arithmetics of sentences could ever chirps
up that smokey blonde Dusty.
   hey man... sit up for 48 hours, write about
writing on napkins, and then have a whiskey,
and watch 2 gloomy days turn into clear-skies
  and a visible sun, setting.
winter child Dec 2017
why does my mom never mention the details,
about the prince she told me in every bed time stories.
whether he has a pair of laying silkworm eyebrows,
that he raise whenever he sings.

whether his piercings would dim weakly,
as its defeated by his bright blinding smile.
and if the prince got this little habit
of bringing the hand closer to his mouth,
as if he’s afraid someone would steal his precious laugh.

I grew up wondering in my teenage days
whether the stories were about you
as i’ve been longing for your presence
ever since I heard my very first fairytale
it's his birthday today
Jordan Gee Sep 2022
hanging halfway out of a cocoon
woke up in a rage
my new body was congealing
suspended in soup like a silkworm
like a bee without a brain
drinkin up all that Royal Jelly.
I had my eyes closed
I was lying so still for so long to be just shaken awake like that.
What even is this Light?
an instagram aesthetic told me to
‘shed my circumference.’
like I haven’t already woven a whole tapestry of snake skins
wide enough to cover the whole ****** sun.
So I lifted my ax and
bam
manifested myself something to chop.
maybe now I’ll put the ax down once
and see where goes the edges of my world.
maybe the Masculine isn’t what they told us it was.
maybe the Masculine isn’t some rugged five’ o'clock shadow come to steal ya girl.
maybe the Masculine isn’t some ****** frat boy who gets the most toys and wins.

maybe the Masculine
is just an old grandpa
holdin up his baby granddaughter girl,
laughing;
eyes shining in the sunlight
sitting atop a bronze hippo at the Philadelphia zoo.

©️  Jordan gee
In alarum in umbra Mercury Rx
Gabriel Apr 2021
She plays mother,
wraps a scarf around her neck.

Red, once,
a proclamation of this,
of who she is.

In her letters,
she writes of little strong hands
taking her
up and up to the end of the world,
the breathlessness
of love, in which she thought,
and afterwards wrote,
and afterwards danced.

The world takes her
and she paints her neck
with something beautiful;
there’s a lot here
about getting to the roots
of it all.

And from this,
something grows.
Something, now, is cultivated
in the passive tense,
and then poets flock to her,
their little strong hands
grasping against her neck
for a taste of the bruises
and the colours.

But she is a spiral in herself,
a coil waiting to snap,
she is the roots of it all.
And the world wants
what the world wants;
to dig it all up
and plant something acceptable.

Still,
the silkworm woman
will not yield,
caught in the effervescence
of spider webs and champagne
she sings,
she shouts,
opens her mouth,
and silence pours out
of the wound.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'Spiral'.
emanation wise
of trees
whose catchment
grieves silkworm
in its leaves
that ties are natural bounds
to flutters in the wing
and sputters wind in hurricane
their minute features spin
a lasso of fear
a topple
Jay M Jan 2020
Concealed behind walls of white; hidden from the world, from possibility; trapped within; looking out at the world so wonderful, so full of color and light, whilst I remain hidden behind these walls. Looking out through windows; out at the world I crave to rejoin, recovering from my falls; internal and external; in my head seated under willows, the emotions and events link as I am pacing those plain halls, jotting my thoughts in a journal, then shredding them to bits,  taking part in wordless turns; giving those who love me quite a fright.

Apologizing for my mistakes; so much repetition, replaying that tainted day; over and over, imprinted in my brain; there it shall stay, forevermore, like a red stain on a white cloth, eaten away by a silent silkworm.

Crying rivers of salt whilst standing in the rain; crashing down around me, splashing at my feet; soothing my shivers, the drumming of each cascading drop so entrancing; running down the storm drain; it leaves me be, a moment of freedom, but only such; to arise once more to be my internal torment; my reflection in the window.

Whilst behind these walls so confining, though there are others around me; I am alone. None can see through the eyes of another, and no matter how many stories of mine I tell they shall never be enough to explain why I am behind these walls; why I am so small, and so afraid; nor why I cannot wait for the day to be on the other side of the window.

As I stand before this view, I realize; this scene here, is quite like Alice; standing before the looking glass, so full of wonder and curiosity of what could come from being on the other side; freedom, surely; but then, once within that freedom; what shall become of you then? Still, the memories would be haunting; still, the past would not let you go; still, all who know you would blame you; still, all would certainly never forgive you; still, you can feel the pressure hiding just on the other side of the looking glass; waiting for you.

Also, on the side of freedom, come the questions; come the side-ways glances; come the distrust; come the watchful eyes; come the empty words; come the promises from those who barely knew and say they shall be there but all is the same; come the cries at night when the ache is so great you cannot keep it in any longer; come the conversations with hesitation; come the jokes with the carefully placed filters; come the songs they quickly switch; come the topics once barely uttered and now often discussed; come the stress soon to try to swallow you whole again; come the temptations that you cast aside; come the guilt and misery; comes the new and all-powerful chaos, waiting to devour you whole.

How could I ever forget the thing I most regret? Nightmare made reality; never entirely given a sense of safety or security; gripping in the dark, searching; leaving a scar upon my weary mind; to remind me of what it is I simply must discover; peace of mind; through the pale lit window.

Through the pale lit window is the potential for chaos, but also the potential for a better future. New outlooks on what could be; projects never before thought of or completed; inspirations for poems and art at every turn; knowledge of my strengths and weaknesses; energy and motivation to walk hikes for miles; songs to be written and sung; stories written, completed, and shared; words spoken that are so few, yet strong and powerful; a life ahead never before dreamt of.

- Jay M
January 21st, 2020
This is a prose poem based upon a poem of mine called "Girl At A Window". I wrote this for my Creative Writing final, which I really hope I get a good grade on.
Third Eye Candy Mar 2020
adrift in my stalwart canoe, I assume the worse
for the clouds on the horizon are ponderous and lackmirth.
they sleep through a Monarch’s birth
from a chrysalis at the tip
of a peach fuzz.
or a Silence as unruly
as Dawn!
all the dandruff of Angels
without the Fall.

silkworms preening tomorrows’ gospels
are swarming the delicate heart
of our discontinued lobotomy.
weaving hope into the tapestry of venom
slithering bemused in our cauldrons.
we leave no trace of our innocence
but rather stain and meander toward
the apex of our blithering.
so our Maths have maps to our Stupor
Like a
Vector to a Bone
of contention.
Stu Harley Sep 2018
once
upon a time
a silkworm
decided to
weave a burgundy red dress
for
a Moondance
T R S Dec 2019
I had acknowledged the brevity of placing crystal on the mantelpiece.


I felt so bad, but at least a loss of a crate barrel of peppercorns had released me from the largest form on endangerment.


Relenting,
I, snoozing about in a blanket made of broken trade deals and lackadaisical linens laced into a self hated leaving.


I shiver like a silkworm held against her better judgement.

I'm sealing a lining with my spit because I'm uncertain what will be.

Just say the word.

If world peace depends on me.
sandra wyllie May 2021
I am me.
Not Peggy Sue
or Mary Lee.
My thoughts are different,

my feelings too. I need a wider
fence to gallop and trot. All who
sat in my saddle have fallen
off. I won’t be roped in or

pulled. I’m sure I’d make
a better mule. Do not compare me
to your others! The bee makes honey –
the cow milk, the silkworm

silk. That's how it is! And will
always be so. If it’s too much for you –
then let me go!
meadowsweet Mar 2020
tonight i'm a seahorse
i am curled in an egg with a jaguar
i'm snow that doesn't fall
i am an insect swallowed by a frog
i'm in my own spine
i am an apple ripening
i dream like a tumor in my breast
i dream what light dreams
i dream i'm all the teeth in the world
tonight i am one grain of sand
i'm a pearl dissolved in the emperor's wine
i am a silkworm
i'm a hyena mating with a lioness
i am water poisoned by corpses
my dreams are crystal, quartz, a dagger
my dreams are shark's teeth, lost in silt
my dreams are hope, despair, distraction
my dreams are sisters
my dreams are blood
my dreams are vinegar
i am the poison hidden in the queen's ring
i'm a landmine sleeping on the beach
i am the lamb without knowledge of sacrifice
i'm the first taste of a spice
tonight i am venus singing through the dark
tonight i am the sea kissing myself
tonight i am the beginning of a dream that is forgotten
tonight i am the night and its fear
tonight i am every shard of glass
tonight i am wisdom dying before love
tonight i'm someone you remember
tonight i'm a nautilus
tonight i'm dreaming in my lungs
His fingers were too long,
patched with nicotine stains
and traces of my DNA

I gave him that small
part if myself, a tiny scrap
of evidence he could keep

He knew that I'd send
no-one looking for it

I knew he'd want to
remember me

He knew I'd have
no choice

He left bits of himself
in my hair

drandruff flecks

On the hip of my jeans
there are snowflakes

Droplets of ice
that have frozen
and expanded over
time

They've spread like
the thread of a silkworm

Tying me to the night
we met

— The End —