"silt" poems
Here in the desert
it's been raining
on and off
for days
making the succulents and cacti
glisten with wetness
their thick skin sparkles
and catches nature's ironic eye
flowers and plants shine
so much better in the half-grey
Here in the prehistoric depths
Of rocky whitewash and silt
flash floods rush through
flushing out all guilt
And inside
a raging storm commences
and I feel so blessed
to be a part of this celebration
my lungs expanding in my chest
I breathe in deep
that fresh purity of air
let it cleanse right through me
from my toes up to my hair
It rushes in my body
taking no prisoners in its force
flows through every vein
cleansing poisons in its course
its power flows into me
washing out this stubborn pain
Turning the confusion
into clarity again
From inside subconscious thoughts
realization thunders
rinsing from my mind
the emotional strain
and replacing it with euphoric wonders
Come, my raging desert tempest
Bathe me
penetrate me with wet
restore and purify
my being
take over and disinfect
let me feel my own strength
until it pours out from my cells
into the space inside my heart
where love and lust still dwell
My tears mingle with the sweet drops
as I fling arms open to the sky
releasing strikes of lightening
for every word I cry
as I summon, pray for lightness
mixed with the sturdiness of earth
Let joy rise up and bubble
within my being
as rebirth
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 11:02 AM UTC
Unburdens the dusky river
*dreams of flow dead in the bog of hyacinth
harvest burnt in the scorch of aridity
ripples robbed by the silt of dogma
sunbeam denied by the **** of creed*
**I was meant to reach the sea,
now I would never make it.**
I pick the river's shattered pieces
with my own from the wintry dusk.
Nov 17, 2015
Nov 17, 2015 at 9:13 AM UTC
Mu chocolate milk has been removed
My parents are so hard to fool!
They saw my mostly chocolate milk
The bottom caked in choco-silt
And now my happy wants to wilt
Goodbye my tasty chocolate milk!
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 5:57 PM UTC
Your childish lies have nothing of a true meaning
because you never saw what truly went on inside my mind.
The cogs were turning, but the wheels got stuck in the muck
that you had left behind when you decided that it was time to bid me adieu.
That child inside me broke
Like the Bay Lake dam that came crashing and tumbling down,
the waters swirling into the ever after.
Leaving me behind, alone, with the lonely company of the silt and the sand.
And then, I wept.
Feb 10, 2014
Feb 10, 2014 at 3:02 PM UTC
her happiness is everything
her pathos; be kind with cruelty
blood and tears, a royal jelly
merciless kisses like blazing pyres
she cries through a night prayer
my push pin princess;
a crimson petal
nerves edge;
jutting ******* seeking cleavers kiss
to serve
to serve
to serve
smiling for a relish of wasps
she knows she is loved
a loved red faced surprise
**** mouth, red chirping sparrow
wax teeth melting
succubus, **** flower
gratefully crushed under foot
toes like musical notes
little pearl ruins
grave stones
whipped cream butter cookie in chains
stipule corridor
**** plume
serrations gush, a singing Dahlia
ripped rose, thorned and curt
plush flames
her skull a throat
her liturgy
weeping, licking gods bulging colossus
wakes her inside
giving her religion
sacrificed on a crucifix of *****
**** of heaven
a burning church possessed
drooling supplications
lustrous saliva web drapes trembling downward thighs
a glutinous chandelier
melts like silk around ankles
crystal silt on scorched heels
to serve
to serve
to serve
her happiness is everything
her pathos; be kind with cruelty
Nov 17, 2018
Nov 17, 2018 at 11:47 AM UTC
There's a Bend in the River By MY place!! My Place is a Corner on the Ever running Stream. The River flows swift and Quietly, With the thoughts of Many Inside. Has it brought any Joy to You or Me? We know the Answer of the River flowing by. It doesn't have to tell us, We SEE it by the Rushing of the Times! The Only place it Slows, is at the bend, by My Place, Giving Answers for all those who want to Know. There once was a Girl, she had such great ambitions and looked to the Stars instead of the River ,,, AND THEN HER GLORY WAS NONE! SO,,,as she Bowed near the Bend in the River, She found a Place to call Her own! Where she sits now, Silt no longer settles,, a River running Clear,has washed away all the sorrows .... She , and many others now enjoy the "BEND IN THE RIVER " by MY place.
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 13, 2010 at 4:27 AM UTC
The paper boats sail
upon the stream.
Curious like vagabonds
questing for dreams.
On they float
through bends & turns,
Over silt mountains
& valleys of fern.
Glide with butterflies,
Caper past toads.
Not a clue where
leads the watery road.
Caressing the earth,
Savoring the rain,
Drawn into the rapids,
Broken free again.
The tempest, the calm,
All the vistas unknown.
Horizons they cross.
To beyond, they've flown!
A paper boat I hold
Only one to spare
Place it in the water
A small white corsair.
She kneels beside me,
on a bed of grass.
Points at the boat
& throws me a glance.
Smiling, she asks,
"Leaving? Where to?"
"Let's find out", I say
"My boat is for two."
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 1:10 AM UTC
the tectonic plates
in me
are shifting
as our continents
approach collide
my ocean is
getting closer
to the mountains
on your landscape
tallest grasses blowing
in wild demon dance,
shaking their
heads as heated
storm approaches
oven-baked air crackling
with its own
electric currents
Nothing can stop it
it's a magnetic force
one to be
reckoned with
surrendered to
as dust foams
like ocean froth
around our heads
clinging to us in tiny
starlit fragments
and soon will come
the slick dive into
wordless waters,
just skin on skin
slippery mouth muscles
like entwined snakes
flick-flicking, shiny
in eye-lit cherry moons
Take my hand.
Just pull me in.
Enfold me,
without talking
watch as my aura
rushes into you,
first a delicate whisk
of cool light
to slake the thirst
of coal-licked caverns
then sparks
and bubbling oxidation
turning into liquid brushfire
Hold your palm
to my chest,
as if to keep
my heart steady,
my glowing flare of halo
pressed into your
clavicle, taking in
the embryonic beats
soothing my torrid ache,
infusing minerals
in vitamin-laced libation
It is time to simply bask
in the new
crispness of radical
shake off
the silt and salt
and rise up
into the spheres
of memory
of soulspeak
of collapsed time zones
budded breath
spiraling up
in curls,
diaphanous
dark mist
ascending
into
light
Jul 27, 2017
Jul 27, 2017 at 6:08 PM UTC
These are the hard times,
the long stretch of coal-shed days,
the corrugated nights of the antinomian.
I retch at the old doubts and the panoply
of dustbins clattering bright,
their watchers simian in the morning ****
I dress as though dredging up greys,
monotone deep in the GB tradition:
now sandpit tea with oil stain floats
silt dreads the mass of a seven year clay.
Four weeks of shadows drown wind in a storm.
And dreams of my cottage
in days of such calm and late summer happiness
as brought cut corn and strawbs
and horse manure in hugs
until like Zulu tribesmen the birds appeared.
Hunched with expectation
Spears smiling like baddies they rushed me.
I woke pouring sweat like a workhorse
the weakest of defences laid up
my face pulling cellophane over French windows.
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 2:07 PM UTC
Tepid damp and lukewarm night,
Build your camp by rivers bright;
Sable black and and somber grey,
Silt the river's arms away.
Island tenements rent for cheap,
Bakèd bricks in plinths lie deep;
Stores of merchants and their wives,
Sheltered from the thund'rous tides.
Glance on that maternal shrine,
Softly angled toward the Rhine;
See the men with flowing beards,
Seldom entertaining fears.
Moon illumes a stony pose,
Sun sustains a garden rose;
Temple pillars bathed in or,
Leave mute shadows on the floor.
Olifant horns begin to sound,
Tribesmen fall upon the town;
Riding with the northern gust,
Trampling the homes to dust.
Yet, as gateside rocks abound,
From the ashes, rises now,
Where that city met disgrace,
A mighty fortress in its place.
Jan 21, 2018
Jan 21, 2018 at 2:40 PM UTC
The shadows have their seasons, too.
The feathery web the budding maples
cast down upon the sullen lawn
bears but a faint relation to
high summer's umbrageous weight
and tunnellike continuum-
black leached from green, deep pools
wherein a globe of gnats revolves
as airy as an astrolabe.
The thinning shade of autumn is
an inherited Oriental,
red worn to pink, nap worn to thread.
Shadows on snow look blue. The skier,
exultant at the summit, sees his poles
elongate toward the valley: thus
each blade of grass projects another
opposite the sun, and in marshes
the mesh is infinite,
as the winged eclipse an eagle in flight
drags across the desert floor
is infinitesimal.
And shadows on water!-
the beech bough bent to the speckled lake
where silt motes flicker gold,
or the steel dock underslung
with a submarine that trembles,
its ladder stiffened by air.
And loveliest, because least looked-for,
gray on gray, the stripes
the pearl-white winter sun
hung low beneath the leafless wood
draws out from trunk to trunk across the road
like a stairway that does not rise.
4.7k
I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and ***** cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.
Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.
A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered
In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,
Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.
4.5k
Dry veins branch the dead gulch
cinder cones set on a marble tan scape
fanning sands sketch ephemeral
fossil plates fold under columns of gray
Mountain back steep at the crevasse
sinkhole spots form on parallel nine
sulfur pipe stems from molten ash
withered shrubs and crumbling spines
silt fields cover the foothills
swayback shed near the Whipple tree barn
tumbledown shacks form the patchwork
from goat canyon ranch to big bison farm
Salt lakes fractured in amber
sickle-bush cut at the bowline knot
a half-moon traced by the viper
oxbow streams and valley grot
Feb 13, 2019
Feb 13, 2019 at 1:43 PM UTC
The Lehigh is chaffing
at the shoulders of her banks
Swollen
with mood of mud
brown and flat and far too fast
She tore those young girls
from their rafts
Decorated the trees
of a midstream island with them
hanging on like the leaves and silt
once did
Their cries swallowed
as she roared past
harvesting souls with clinging hands
Chosen
to be victim
Chosen
for a reason
to be spared
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 7:58 PM UTC
how is it that i feel this strange way, even though i choose to ignore it, to brush it aside like noise coming from a construction site.
what is this uneasiness, the shaking of my body at the hands of winter?
do i simply choose to ignore it because i consider it insignificant or is it simply that am not brave enough to face the consequences of such thoughts?
these thoughts that are harder to understand than reaching the reefs of the sea.
i occasionally let the sun burn my skin, and let the rain drench my body hoping i would find answers in suffering,
but all it has taught me is too wiser in taking decisions, as i am confronted with a cold later.
how is it that we could be like liquid, formless and shapeless, sinking deeper and understanding every molecule of our existence?
how is it that we align ourselves with the secrets we hold that we ourselves, are not even aware of?
maybe we have always been like this, forbidden from knowing some parts about ourselves.
yet we think we know the world more, when the secrets within us are lost in the dunes of the desert.
this desert doesn’t really have an oasis, because the water dried up a long time ago, when humans didn’t even begin to question themselves.
to be like liquid now, to be free and yet know our deepest selves, maybe all we need is a little rain in this desert?
but the coast is far, and the winds only carry sand silt.
i wonder if this is how a civilization dies.
Dec 13, 2022
Dec 13, 2022 at 1:17 PM UTC
I sunk to the bottom of the ocean once. Though it wasn't really all that grand. Everything that I saw was either shrouded in darkness, or a silty haze. The water was cold and the currents were violent. They ****** me too and fro.
Now, don't get me wrong, I like it there at the bottom of the ocean, it's calm and it's dark and it soothes the fires of a soul like mine. The passage there however is the part that hurts so much, for before you may sink into the silky silt of the ocean floor and become neighbors with the ***** you must descend through the turbulence and the dangerous anglerous fish that inhabit the places betwixt.
I suppose the hardest part about the journey is saying goodbye to the sunshine that you grew to love, after having spent time, from the ocean floor.
Someone drags you up and you see the sun and you start to laugh more, and you start to love more and everything starts to feel warm and beautiful again. You look at that someone that brought you up and wrought you into shape and you see such beauty. They shine like the sun, no, they are even better.
But sometimes,
They abandon us.
That is not to say we are doomed to sink back down, they do not hold us here, as we do not hold them. We are free to remain on the surface with the sunlight.
Most of us choose to jump back in, though.
Let the ocean swallow us whole once again.
Some swim back to the surface, determined to, perhaps, be more than a friendly newspaper conversation with a crustacean.
However, many just live there, unwilling, unable, to go anywhere else.
I sunk, to the bottom of the ocean once. Or twice, and a few times after that. Always finding a reason to swim back, sometimes I am dragged back. No matter which way though and honestly, how matters not, I always end up back on that beach.
Waiting, watching the ocean. Wondering, pondering the possibilities and if I should wade back out and sink down once again.
The ocean surely is a frightful thing.
Nov 2, 2016
Nov 2, 2016 at 2:45 AM UTC
You walk to the woods from the mountains too fast;
trip over your feet when blades of grass nip at your heels
and take up life amongst the low.
Flotsam swirls in your wake;
silt rises to meet you.
The sun sets in deference to your arrival.
You walk among a sea of azaleas and fire:
bloody-thorned crown:
smoke laying low over the ground protecting your footfalls,
come to convince me of my damnation,
spill mulch in my bed,
and track lake water through my rooms.
You walk with broken glass in your heels
and blood on your cheeks,
spilt milk smile and sickly sweet lips,
cradling a dead bird and a lead heart in your hands
with a gallows leash hanging off your neck, onto the ground.
You walk into the house of my elders,
the sacred burial ground,
the meeting place,
the palace,
and the bar.
You order a scotch on the rocks, a lapis circlet, a book full of secrets, dead man’s blood, and my heart.
You walk backwards
around the cherry blossom orchard and its overwrought signatures,
harrumphing at arrogant petals and snickering birds:
politic in reverse and rough lines in slow motion.
There is something you forgot: it wears white linen and
sits on a rose throne.
You loved it, once.
You walk to the mountains from the woods,
barefoot and starving,
caked in mud and licking the shine off your teeth.
Your knees are bleeding.
Your heart is bleeding
Jul 9, 2018
Jul 9, 2018 at 11:29 PM UTC
Birds chirp, the winds blow,
And as the sun sets, we give the day a bow.
Clean Colorado accommodates commoners from Lincoln's Land.
We've ditched the silt and the sand;
Stranded in a glimpse of a possible past, here I stand.
Elated by elevation, tranced by trepidation,
the group's gaze encounters a misty haze,
Followed by copious amounts of precipitation.
Pick up the pace; though we won't win the race
To the dry car and a full case.
Hell is the home of a heathen's heart;
Heaven holds promise a bright new start.
Existence on earth extends only for so long;
For now we're here, soon to be gone.
Early mornings shed light on a promising day;
Late nights cast spells we drunkenly obey
Perched in a chair by a growing fire,
the consuming flames ascend higher and higher.
Ignited embers blown astray,
Trails of smoke follow its prey.
Back on the highway.
Homeward bound, the only sounds
Are the stories and gestures that say
Not what we lost, but what we found.
Jul 2, 2011
Jul 2, 2011 at 10:27 PM UTC
i slept in the heart of the swallow’s breast
in the tire-swing marina
“who do you love best?”
what is the name that I drank in the dark
whose syllables traipsed through the silt
morning start
who was the pit of my hunger my thirst
i am a tulip, bloom
ing in reverse
Dec 6, 2011
Dec 6, 2011 at 8:46 PM UTC
— after Melancholia
She’d have walked through fire for him —
A stranger with a fractured chameleon soul,
Tumultuous depths and misguided hymns,
But promises of patience and a steady stroll.
Stranger still, a fractured chameleon soul,
Restless beneath wind-tremors and silt-clay loam.
But with promises of patience and a steady stroll,
She follows the moon that leads her home
Restlessly. Wind tremors and silt-clay loam,
Burnt umber flicker-beats and faded birches.
She follows the moon, led home
To an abandoned, white-chip-painted church.
Beyond umber flicker-beats and faded birches,
He preached of salvation, but fell privy
Inside the abandoned, white-chip-painted church
Where green was gold and gold was envy.
He preached of salvation, but fell privy
To tumultuous depths and a misguided hymn.
Green was gold and gold was envy —
She’d have walked through fire for him.
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 4:00 PM UTC
my reflection, anatomical inaccuracy reads something like:
fairy dust in a silt layer, bones all shattered at the press of her fingers, and for months I molded a sandcastle around the soft
sinking, drinking ichor from a cocktail glass and dragging nails across my discomfort -
did you see that girl taking a tempest inside herself, to warp her sinew, spreading from this side of the universe to other?
in the lamplight I bit a secret onto the ridge of her spine; sometimes I sleep near fires hoping my insides become glass
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 8:48 PM UTC
It was at the cottage, by the marsh,
Where the husband slipped through the threshold.
The Bass boots left marks of silt and clay on the worn wooden floor.
He dropped the shovel on the floor as well.
And globs of mud, sawgrass and marsh water seeped in the cracks, forever to stay there,
As a silent reminder.
He sat down at the dinner table, a table for two,
With only one chair.
The coo-coo clock chimed above his head,
It was dinner time, where was dinner?
His thick gruff hands made fists and smashed the table top,
Breaking the maple top in two, which now made it a table for one.
He just needs sleep, his temper was getting to him.
As the husband climb up the stairs to the spacious bed,
And laid his head upon the pillow, he fell asleep.
But if you follow the muddy tracks down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the door, into the rain,
to the marsh, you will see a pile of mud that looks misplaced.
The sludge will begin to shift and slide away to reveal a hauntingly beautiful women.
She will rise, and walk through the marsh, in the rain, to the door, through the kitchen and up the stairs to see her husband in a fitful sleep.
And as any good wife would do,
She'll kiss him and lay next to him to ease whatever could be on his mind at this hour.
Jan 9, 2013
Jan 9, 2013 at 8:22 PM UTC
*We were squeezed from corruption
armed with the monstrous cutlery
of rippers and tearers of rationed meat
for a day, for a day, for a day:
the butcher gives his best cuts
to the young and godless divorcee
find us, keep us : a spectre hiding
in the dark pig iron rust hooks looping
through your *** and shopping lists:
smelting your coin
and punching your face
Company is the full knowledge
of our protracted, 3 -stage decay
burn drift degradation
eyes crusting shut
in doom and settling bomb silt
palms up, taking a punishment
in the mothertongue
ignoring lessons in the gracious
expectancy of departure
We, A legion of ancient clockwatchers,
in on the joke of time
and folk fetish of apple-cheek poverty
[Gasp!] The gruesome romance of class!
!you cry! !safe! !always safe!
in the nuclear hotdog option , which is
observably, the title of this advertisement
We will never get you[ ]you're awake!
and your atmosphere is still In Da Black
We watch you
watching
the 5 car pile up
catch up rolling down your chin*
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 10:20 AM UTC
Somewhere along the way
I picked up a heavy load
of dead wood, a couple of degrees
east of East Tennessee,
a few bottles uncorked,
problem women, and another
woman, a child, and a mortgage,
all while I wandered down the left fork
of the wrong road like the red silt
in a river that has forgotten
its source, but enjoying the scenery,
the journey, and, of course,
the paths I tended to leave
through the high weeds where I lost
myself and my footprints so loud
I could hear them before I left them
on the ground behind me
like hollow dreams trampled down
beneath the feet that I follow.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 1:29 PM UTC
Only one little
silly tiny
movement
can create ripples
of effects
and tonight
as I reached for the
garlic or salt
or whatever
the hell it was---
something harsh was set
I brushed your shoulder
or was too much in your space
somehow jolting your ego
from its permanent, fragile place
You chose to take that
and make a fight
from dust
and this in turn led
to splitting hearts
spitting corrupted trust
passive aggressive silt
swept out
from under rugs
emotional bluntness of punches
instead of the realness of hugs
Where have we reached
what have we done
All I know
is my heart's on
the run
These little ***** triggers
can open
Pandora's sick, dark box
unlocking old resentments
from behind rusty locks
"You will never be forgiven"
are words
that destroy
they suffocate and choke
turn real gold to alloy
and Man, this gold is melting down
running in streams
painting false this town
in shades of hurt
in shades of pain
just lay me down
in this thick desert sun
to bear this unbearable
splintered strain
Let me pour this liquid burden
into the salt of the cracks
of the earth
Let me be replenished
with crystal water coolness
as I, head held up in tears,
remember
my golden worth
Aug 8, 2016
Aug 8, 2016 at 3:02 AM UTC