"skeins" poems
Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-
Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long
Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives
The old myth of orgins
Unimaginable. You float near
As kneeled ice-mountains
Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:
Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form suffers
Some strange injury
And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors
Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,
For the archaic trenched lines
Of your grained face shed time in runnels:
Ages beat like rains
On the unbeaten channels
Of the ocean. Such sage humor and
Durance are whirlpools
To make away with the ground-
Work of the earth and the sky's ridgepole.
Waist down, you may wind
One labyrinthine tangle
To root deep among knuckles, shinbones,
Skulls. Inscrutable,
Below shoulders not once
Seen by any man who kept his head,
You defy questions;
You defy godhood.
I walk dry on your kingdom's border
Exiled to no good.
Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.
15.1k
In her gauzy garments
Above the bowing trees
The moon has many lovers
In the sighing breeze.
They all take her dancing
In exotic lands
They give her sparkling diamonds
They kiss her milk-white hands.
She is round & fullsome
Or slender as a waif
When she is then waning
Her flowers are kept safe.
Silken skeins of darkness
When she's waxing full
Are parted by her brightness
She is NEVER dull!
Her beaux are all so courtly
But she eschews them all
Her only love can make her pale
She burns at his call...
She lets out her moonbeams
Through her eyes they weep
She loves the one eclipsing her
They can NEVER meet!
She, so strong within her court
Will curtsey when he comes
The moon has many lovers
But she's taken by the SUN.
Catherine Jarvis
(C) 12/14/2019
Dec 15, 2019
Dec 15, 2019 at 12:07 AM UTC
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
8.8k
Fear the stillness whers't thou find
the dreary life and idle mind,
wherein thine own reflection lies
a baleful thing with glassy eyes.
Let horror of this fill thine heart,
to maul thy slothy core apart.
Ignite within thine blighted soul,
a fire that should cleanse it whole.
Let passion rouse it from thine state,
that thou shalt grasp the skeins of fate.
Thus boldly stride a person who,
was born, hath died, is born anew.
Jul 1, 2016
Jul 1, 2016 at 3:27 AM UTC
In the hush between raindrops and stone, the hills lean inward, as if listening for a voice that never returned.
Low clouds drag their grief across the shoulders of the land, a soft lament in vapor, layered like old letters, unsent.
The trees don't speak— but their silence is fluent, a language of absence etched in shadow and bark.
The sorrow here doesn't weep, it settles in the terrain like ash from a fire no one recalls lighting.
A tragedy, perhaps, of the forgotten— the slow erosion of faces from stone, the fading of footsteps into deep green moss.
And still, the wind carries a lament— a breath, a whisper, a suggestion that the past is not past, it merely sleeps beneath the skeins of brooding, hung cloud.
[email protected]
Sep 9, 2025
Sep 9, 2025 at 10:53 PM UTC
You have abandoned purity for perfection.
Even the blind have moments of clarity
but you ***** around like the Cyclops
feeling nowhere for noman while
affecting a quiet, moronic expression.
You can't knit without needles,
but you have mislaid the point and
so things unravel into random skeins.
Your typewriter rattles only in reverse.
Bards stub their toes and wail.
You hear them, but pay no attention.
You are listening for the atomic thunderclap.
Nothing less than finale of final will do.
When it explodes at last you will know
the inarticulate, unspeakable name of god.
Perhaps Fred. Perhaps Norma or Justine.
Perhaps merely a very loud Boom...
That will be more than enough for one life.
Feb 11, 2017
Feb 11, 2017 at 8:59 AM UTC
I use ‘oh, my god’ as an expression
not of faith, but surprise,
of wonder at beauty untouched
by ideology or dogma
as if caught, and pulled, from a dream.
I exclaim ‘oh, my god’ when stunned
not by holy ghosts, but the living,
who do kindness as though it were nothing
unmindful of securing safe passage
into heaven, or paradise.
‘Oh, my god’, I cry, when words fall idle
or are muted to quiet reverence.
Where twisted skeins of empiric memory,
rush in crashing surf
of reminiscence and nostalgia.
I am godless, but not without reason
‘oh, my god’ being a slip of historical,
idiomatic vernacular.
Even as curiosity drives me to understand
your own ritualistic, devotional motivations.
Raise the cup, my friend
it gives us both what we need.
For you, transubstantiation
for me a divine and luscious tableaux.
For Saint Teresa in her ecstasy no doubt exclaimed
‘Oh, my god’!
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 10:50 AM UTC
It starts like a beige tuft of fibre
Protruding from a large burlap sack.
As we pull it from the hidden source
It gradually reveals itself.
Simple and unassuming,
A uniform, coloured strand
Which we gather up into a tidy ball.
Sometimes another strand is tied
Onto the one we pull.
A different colour?
A change of texture?
And so we pull that one anew,
We build another coil,
While the original strand awaits.
The interesting new thread,
Reveals itself from the hidden reservoir.
The fibre slides through our fingers.
Slowly, when there is resistance.
Quicker, when it comes loosely.
Now coarse and wiry
Now soft and slippery,
Now thick and tufted.
Tough Scottish highlands perhaps?
Or rural Ontario?
Sometimes the hidden source seems like it may be
A hand-knit sweater that we are pulling apart.
The strands are still kinked and twisted in places,
Echoing a memory of a shape it has held for years.
We recognize bits here and there too.
Colours and textures from our own story.
"I had a pair of socks like that."
"Remember our scarves from those cold childhood winters?"
The collection of small skeins increases.
From a sheep's fleece, yes, but now too
From Alpaca, camel and rabbit.
Cashmere from Pashmina goats in Nepal?
But at last the final strand comes free.
You feel the weight of the coiled wool,
And see the diversity of the colours.
And for each coil
We remember again how it appeared
How it felt.
How the strands
Came together
And apart.
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 10:13 AM UTC
Burning, he walks in the stream of flickering letters, clarinets,
machines throbbing quicker than the heart, lopped-off heads, silk
canvases, and he stops under the sky
and raises toward it his joined clenched fists.
Believers fall on their bellies, they suppose it is a monstrance that
shines,
but those are knuckles, sharp knuckles shine that way, my friends.
He cuts the glowing, yellow buildings in two, breaks the walls into
motley halves;
pensive, he looks at the honey seeping from those huge honeycombs:
throbs of pianos, children's cries, the thud of a head banging against
the floor.
This is the only landscape able to make him feel.
He wonders at his brother's skull shaped like an egg,
every day he shoves back his black hair from his brow,
then one day he plants a big load of dynamite
and is surprised that afterward everything spouts up in the explosion.
Agape, he observes the clouds and what is hanging in them:
globes, penal codes, dead cats floating on their backs, locomotives.
They turn in the skeins of white clouds like trash in a puddle.
While below on the earth a banner, the color of a romantic rose,
flutters,
and a long row of military trains crawls on the weed-covered tracks.
2k
The yarn came promptly.
When I started
to use one skein,
I began to pull out
pieces of yarn about
8-10 inches in length.
About half of the skein
was made up
of these short strands.
The next couple of skeins were OK,
but the third
had broken strands
about every 10 feet.
A bit frustrating
to say the least.
Aug 6, 2011
Aug 6, 2011 at 8:36 PM UTC
Shiny bricks and skeins of yellow grass
Barely perceptible colours
Hung with liquid haze
Dog **** and thunder
Heavy close and thick
Miasma
Clings to sweat
Running with drizzle
Clings to damp
Drowning the pores of the skin
Making collars clinging sticky
Rubbing and abrasive
In view of the towering flats
The greyly awaiting wait
Standing at the bus stop
Speaking quiet weather talk
In the distantly English way
So safely meaningless
This polite evasion
Ignores their damp dilemma
Soon, as they sit inside the bus
These bodies shall steam
Like cattle in a byre
Kids hang around the shops
Emptying and kicking cans
The younger ones
Run and shout manically
Their elders spit
And swear casually
All hoods and shadows
Asking adults to buy them lager
Because they can't get served at the "offie"
Rain changes nothing here
A bedroom guitar plays
Weakly electric
And the Turneresque sky
Swallows the sound whole and flat
Sophisticated trash
Crying into a cloudy breast
Shaded darkly round
Full and swollen
Grey and sodden
The distant rumbling
Tumbling closer to home
By Phil Roberts
May 6, 2017
May 6, 2017 at 10:54 AM UTC
Imagine a spherical shield,
all sensual swirls of body art
and gleaming currents of
silent comings and goings.
Her path is radiant
with skeins of silver slime.
She’s discreetly **** inside her shell,
snuggling in mystical moisture.
A willing captive,
She’s self-sufficient,
timid yet eager to explore,
free to withdraw at any given moment.
Admire the courage of her smallness,
the generosity of her gifts to the beauty
of our skin, our gastronomic delight.
She does not fear mortality’s ultimate crush.
She lives and dies in the joy of giving
her soft, sweet syrup back to the earth.
Jan 29, 2019
Jan 29, 2019 at 5:13 AM UTC
His mother bought the wool in skeins
with four children to clothe
knitting was so much less expensive
than buying woolens in the store
and who counted the hours spent
with the needles click clacking
plain and pearl in fancy patterns.
Every few months he would stand there
in front of his mother, hands outstretched
shoulder width apart
spindly arms and legs
holding the loop of wool
seemingly endless as he, in rhythm
with his mother, unwound the wool
onto the ball growing bigger
each length left his outstretched fingers
swaying in sync with the reeling in
at the finish, when he could go off and play
read a book, follow his early adolescent urges
running and jumping
he would imagine the ***** of wool
one for an arm, the sweater, a gift for Christmas
another for the old man’s winter woolie
his ganzy as he called it
keeping his rotund figure warm
despite the bracing wind
reaching into the bones
pulling out the last remnants of summer warmth
The son is older now
and all those jumpers are gone
cast into the past, a memory
sitting and standing
in rhythm together
creation and warmth
love and the click clack of needles.
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 4:48 PM UTC
All of us are travelers lost,
out tickets arranged at cost
unknown but beyond our means.
This odd itinerary of scenes
- enigmatic, strange, unreal -
leaves us unsure how to feel.
No postmortem journey is rife
with more mystery than life.
Tremulous skeins of destiny
flutter so ethereally
around me - but then I feel
its embrace is that of steel.
On the road that I taken,
one day, walking, I awaken,
amazed to see where I have come,
where I'm going, where I'm from.
This is not the path I thought.
This is not the place I sought.
This is not the dream I bought,
just a fever of fate I've caught.
I'll change highways in a while,
at the crossroads, one more mile.
My path is lit by my own fire.
I'm going only where I desire.
On the road that I have taken,
one day, walking, I awaken.
One Day, walking, I awaken,
on the road that I have taken.
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 6:17 PM UTC
Take the silken ribbon from my hair.
Wrap it tight around my neck.
For on cold nights of loneliness.
In darkness.
My cold body sits.
My neck bruised in compassion.
Once there in sight.
Was once there in mind.
There for company.
Seek and thou shall find my friend.
Embalmed behind a sullen smile.
Austere.
Such quiet company.
In dignified silence sat.
My mouth stitched shut.
Calling out is not aloud.
I feel you watching me.
While in eternity I sleep.
A presence around me.
I feel that you want me.
Caught by skeins of royal blue.
Oxygen depleted.
In a tapestry of captivity.
But I am not yours.
Only God can set me free.
(C) Livvi
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 6:18 AM UTC
The fortunate I,
The send-sighted me,
What might have I done
To deserve this to see?
That inchworm in paining,
Though pretty she was,
Has set to cocooning,
In endless becomes.
Such books, she has heavy,
Her heart so it spins,
That silken word cover,
With lux-journal skeins.
Such passion in weaving,
She'll fuel open minds,
And full will this artist,
Soon her medium find.
Oct 2, 2010
Oct 2, 2010 at 10:42 PM UTC
Collected skeins of unraveled words drift along in space
Existing in the complexity of time
Bits and pieces of exchanges between two hearts
Containing the mysteries of their rhyme
Sweetness held in close regard never to be revealed
Lies waiting between each and every line
Of the secrets that the words themselves contain
Safely locked away to never be defined
Time will ever hold these words in its warm embrace
As a divine reminder of a love so true
A legacy to only be unraveled by two loving hearts
Exchanging words of love the way we do
These skeins of unraveled words exist here in this time
Complex and yet so simple in their truth
Rhyme, reason, or their secrets, are not to be defined
Until read, by two hearts in love so true
Jun 14, 2010
Jun 14, 2010 at 11:52 AM UTC
liquid gold falls upon your face
highlighting your lips’ quivering with concentration
i wonder are they as soft as i’ve imagined
as i melt into you, unassuming
my smile widens and my stomach knots
like my skeins of wool
that i never cut loose
i too shall detangle
and remain whole
with time
Jun 8, 2022
Jun 8, 2022 at 1:43 PM UTC
My dog is such a cat, you know.
Plays laser tag; meows for show!
She’s arf and arf it seems.
She plays with tangled skeins of yearns,
For hours and hours, and then she turns
To wander through my dreams.
I know they say that pets become
Their owners’ déjà vu’s--in sum,
Immeasurably similar.
So which is which,
Did my left brain twitch?
Is the dog her man’s exhibitor?
And scientists will disagree
About the causal origins.
So be it.
Ask **** and Jane.
Ask Spot, and then
Just simply a-b see it!
Meowff!!
Sep 12, 2016
Sep 12, 2016 at 3:08 PM UTC
Love is a rich tapestry.
New love is a beautiful gift, created boldly, a work of art.
Multi -coloured skeins of thread, driven through the fabric, with such force, such urgency.
Feeble thread nurtured, making cloth of strength, as true love's support.
Combined to make treasures to be cherished.
Straight from the loom, as samplers so charming, repeating memories as heirlooms, in otherwise silent royal rooms.
Those colours, they change, when bright and new glowing.
Still vibrating in silent feeling.
A nuance noted with tenderness, as lovers become companions, as two lives combine in unison.
The tints may fade, but the fabric will therein reside.
(c) Livvi
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 4:08 PM UTC
Well,
memories,
hemorrhages
well
up from the sticky hole.
One time, I fell and hit my head
three times, three places, once in each:
the cabinet, the sink, the bathtub.
Practice being me by proxy.
Out of my head. Out my head.
Tangible damages,
incorporeal skeins.
Mess? Wreck. Heck,
This time, I stood and cracked
my skull on the cabinet:
Clarity? Is that you?
Practiced being me by proxy,
so so long.
Practiced being me by proxy.
Practiced being me by proxy,
so so long.
Practiced being me by proxy.
Clarity?
Or is this
an actual
hemorrhage?
Well,
Memory,
my sticky hole
is filling up
where the water was ****** by the ground.
Sep 20, 2018
Sep 20, 2018 at 4:49 PM UTC
drifting through mist
scouring the sand
looking for shells, pebbles
twisted driftwood
ancient treasures clutched in hand
skeins of seaweed
splayed on the beach
foaming white lace
i dance
out of reach
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 8:40 PM UTC
Life can be a tango, a rumba, a waltz
Meticulously choreographed to display all of our faults
Also too, our perfect lines do shine
Straight through the cosmos, into the divine
Steps sweep lightly, ethereal and grand
A new beat, branched path,where sure feet land
I've heard many a rhythm, carried many a tune
Yet none so melodic as the one played by you
Our moves are cohesive, playful and smooth
Dipping down into love, feeling this groove
You taught and I learned,many new things
The simplest has no clue of the comfort it brings
We are not the steps that we take
We are the music we make
We are not the fabric between seams
We are bolts upon bolts, skeins upon skeins
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 9:41 AM UTC
Shiny bricks and skeins of yellow grass
Barely perceptible colours
Hung with liquid haze
Dog **** and thunder
Heavy close and thick
Miasma
Clings to sweat
Running with drizzle
Clings to damp
Drowning the pores of the skin
Making collars clinging sticky
Rubbing and abrasive
In view of the towering flats
The greyly awaiting wait
Standing at the bus stop
Speaking quiet weather talk
In the distantly English way
So safely meaningless
This polite evasion
Ignores their damp dilemma
Soon, as they sit inside the bus
These bodies shall steam
Like cattle in a byre
Kids hang around the shops
Emptying and kicking cans
The younger ones
Run and shout manically
Their elders spit
And swear casually
All hoods and shadows
Asking adults to buy them lager
Because they can't get served at the "offie"
Rain changes nothing here
A bedroom guitar plays
Weakly electric
And the Turneresque sky
Swallows the sound whole and flat
Sophisticated trash
Crying into a cloudy breast
Shaded darkly round
Full and swollen
Grey and sodden
The distant rumbling
Tumbling closer to home
By Phil Roberts
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 4:01 AM UTC
Shiny bricks and skeins of yellow grass
Barely perceptible colours
Hung with liquid haze
Dog **** and thunder
Heavy close and thick
Miasma
Clings to sweat
Running with drizzle
Clings to damp
Drowning the pores of the skin
Making collars clinging sticky
Rubbing and abrasive
In view of the towering flats
The greyly awaiting wait
Standing at the bus stop
Speaking quiet weather talk
In the distantly English way
So safely meaningless
This polite evasion
Ignores their damp dilemma
Soon, as they sit inside the bus
These bodies shall steam
Like cattle in a byre
Kids hang around the shops
Emptying and kicking cans
The younger ones
Run and shout manically
Their elders spit
And swear casually
All hoods and shadows
Asking adults to buy them lager
Because they can't get served at the "offie"
Rain changes nothing here
A bedroom guitar plays
Weakly electric
And the Turneresque sky
Swallows the sound whole and flat
Sophisticated trash
Crying into a cloudy breast
Shaded darkly round
Full and swollen
Grey and sodden
The distant rumbling
Tumbling closer to home
By Phil Roberts
Feb 15, 2016
Feb 15, 2016 at 5:09 AM UTC