"slake" poems
Above the caldera at Yellowstone,
a brittle soil-rock crust
caps a lake of liquid fire
with only fumaroles and roiling geysers
to slake its upward ******
A single heedless step is enough
to breech that mantle's fragile seal -
spelling death by fire
to any hapless soul
who fails to guard his steps.
Fragile calderas also roil
buried in dark crevices of our psyches -
brewed of failures, slights and fears
dissolved in fiery pools
of self-consuming misery.
To dress and salve our wounded souls
we plant fertile gardens of reconciliation
with beauty, trust and charity
and kneel to gods of grace and solace.
But a despot’s practiced eye
knows how to tap our fragile crusts,
releasing acrid lava flows
from pools where fear and rage reign hot,
and reason has no district.
Friends and siblings - my flesh and kin,
this world is ours to lose or save
so let us seal well our Sacred Calderas
from bitter foes that stalk us from within.
July, 2006, revised December, 2014, 2015 and 2018
Robert Charles Howard
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 12:40 AM UTC
1736
Proud of my broken heart, since thou didst break it,
Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee,
Proud of my night, since thou with moons dost slake it,
Not to partake thy passion, my humility.
Thou can’st not boast, like Jesus, drunken without companion
Was the strong cup of anguish brewed for the Nazarene
Thou can’st not pierce tradition with the peerless puncture,
See! I usurped thy crucifix to honor mine!
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The veil, the veil, it coats me in labor and delay!
I tarry not by will but by mass, form, and time.
Face turned to heaven, toes to its floor I will let the sea overtake me,
As though its current could slake this hiraeth,
This riptide of yearning that pulls at my soul.
Truly, to stand before the sea is to be audience to the world.
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 28, 2014 at 4:45 PM 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
The hour is slim!
This is the tangled time,
the time that heavy
with want
becomes the jaws
for open thighs.
Her tasty flesh renders
the cleft of wet truth.
Persephone can slake,
can shatter my ache,
when,
enthralled against
the serpent earth
with
legs knotted,
we
lay tangled in ancient ruin.
re-edit
words Tommy Carroll
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 6:28 AM UTC
The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer,
A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage,
A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air.
But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust
In shimmering exhaust
Searching to slake
Its fever in ocean
Will play and be idle or else it will bust.
The swallow of summer, the barbed harpoon,
She flings from the furnace, a rainbow of purples,
Dips her glow in the pond and is perfect.
But the serpent of cars that collapsed on the beach
Disgorges its organs
A scamper of colours
Which roll like tomatoes
Nude as tomatoes
With sand in their creases
To cringe in the sparkle of rollers and screech.
The swallow of summer, the seamstress of summer,
She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it,
She draws a long thread and she knots it at the corners.
But the holiday people
Are laid out like wounded
Flat as in ovens
Roasting and basting
With faces of torment as space burns them blue
Their heads are transistors
Their teeth grit on sand grains
Their lost kids are squalling
While man-eating flies
Jab electric shock needles but what can they do?
They can climb in their cars with raw bodies, raw faces
And start up the serpent
And headache it homeward
A car full of squabbles
And sobbing and stickiness
With sand in their crannies
Inhaling petroleum
That pours from the foxgloves
While the evening swallow
The swallow of summer, cartwheeling through crimson,
Touches the honey-slow river and turning
Returns to the hand stretched from under the eaves -
A boomerang of rejoicing shadow.
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"Under the flag
Of each his faction, they to battle bring
Their embryon atoms." - Milton
WELCOME joy, and welcome sorrow,
Lethe's **** and Hermes' feather;
Come to-day, and come to-morrow,
I do love you both together!
I love to mark sad faces in fair weather;
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder;
Fair and foul I love together.
Meadows sweet where flames are under,
And a giggle at a wonder;
Visage sage at pantomine;
Funeral, and steeple-chime;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dress'd
With the aspic at her breast;
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and muses pale;
Sombre Saturn, Momus hale; -
Laugh and sigh, and laugh again;
Oh the sweetness of the pain!
Muses bright, and muses pale,
Bare your faces of the veil;
Let me see; and let me write
Of the day, and of the night -
Both together: - let me slake
All my thirst for sweet heart-ache!
Let my bower be of yew,
Interwreath'd with myrtles new;
Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
And my couch a low grass-tomb.
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I met you in the time between embers and aries
when the sky darkens early and the leaves decide to depart from branches
when the cold grey dreary fuels me emphatically
and the cold crispness reminds me I am so delightfully alive
In those fiery red orange embers to the grey bleak aries
was I thus enflamed and envigorated by you
When I met you in that time between embers and aries
and we traded soft whispers and heated glances,
salacious banter and satisfied stares
in that time between embers and aries
where I hungered for all of you
exuding avaricious energy
to slake myself with your scent
and delight in the way my fingers dance through your hair
and revel in the way I trace my desire across your skin
my embers and aries are stained with you
Nov 21, 2020
Nov 21, 2020 at 5:14 AM UTC
Oh deep, dark depression,
my uninvited guest,
the persistence of oppression
is precluding my life’s zest.
The dark before sunrise
of a dawn that just won't break,
suppressed by a thirst for my soul
that only sorrow can now slake.
The wisps that you are weaving
are clouding my damp eyes,
a cold and cloying shroud
that’s covering all that I desire.
A void, with sides so steeply etched
and burning with cold dread,
I’m trembling now with fragile fear
and wondering if I dare tread.
Your shadow wraps me in its arms
to hold me once again,
a old familiar friend
that’s feeding fast upon my pain.
A symbiotic succor
and reluctant shield of sighs
from the turmoil of a life
that turned to tears before my eyes.
And the sleep within my veins
now washes over silent souls,
a mind numbing response
to a desperate, lonely call.
I’m crying out from within the prison
of this decaying fragile frame
and I hide my face behind a smile
from relentless passionate pain.
Oh deep, dark depression,
my uninvited guest,
the darkness you are dealing
leaves my soul with little rest.
Now your fog has engulfed me
to the edges of my world,
I hope and pray that one day soon,
my wings will be unfurled.
Written by Darren Scanlon, 2nd June 2014.
Revised 20th August 2015.
©2014 Darren Scanlon. All rights reserved.
Aug 20, 2015
Aug 20, 2015 at 6:59 PM UTC
Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
My staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.
Blood must be my body’s balmer,
No other balm will there be given,
Whilst my soul, like a white palmer,
Travels to the land of heaven;
Over the silver mountains,
Where spring the nectar fountains;
And there I’ll kiss
The bowl of bliss,
And drink my eternal fill
On every milken hill.
My soul will be a-dry before,
But after it will ne’er thirst more;
And by the happy blissful way
More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,
That have shook off their gowns of clay,
And go apparelled fresh like me.
I’ll bring them first
To slake their thirst,
And then to taste those nectar suckets,
At the clear wells
Where sweetness dwells,
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.
And when our bottles and all we
Are fill’d with immortality,
Then the holy paths we’ll travel,
Strew’d with rubies thick as gravel,
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors,
High walls of coral, and pearl bowers.
From thence to heaven’s bribeless hall
Where no corrupted voices brawl,
No conscience molten into gold,
Nor forg’d accusers bought and sold,
No cause deferr’d, nor vain-spent journey,
For there Christ is the king’s attorney,
Who pleads for all without degrees,
And he hath angels, but no fees.
When the grand twelve million jury
Of our sins and sinful fury,
‘Gainst our souls black verdicts give,
Christ pleads his death, and then we live.
Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader,
Unblotted lawyer, true proceeder,
Thou movest salvation even for alms,
Not with a bribed lawyer’s palms.
And this is my eternal plea
To him that made heaven, earth, and sea,
Seeing my flesh must die so soon,
And want a head to dine next noon,
Just at the stroke when my veins start and spread,
Set on my soul an everlasting head.
Then am I ready, like a palmer fit,
To tread those blest paths which before I writ.
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You are afloat on troubled waters and sinking ever fast
Struggling for every breath, you try to take
Where’s this needless measure of treading getting you
When all your problems never seem to slake
The water is at your chin now, slipping towards your lips
As the shore moves quicker from your sight
You best get a grip now, before you go and lose it all
Start discovering that you have lost this fight
All this pain that you are creating, that is eating you inside
Is it really worth the price you will have to pay
You best stand up in the water and pull yourself up straight
If you have any plans to see another day
The troubled water is the life you live, this existence that you hold
While clinging to the remnants and the shame
Turn fast against the current and swim for all you are worth
Or go right under and do not accept the blame
Jun 7, 2010
Jun 7, 2010 at 8:13 PM UTC
Cauld-bluided, humphing ower the stark grey hills
Gowd een skinkle to an fro
Split tongue lappin at the wind-blown smells
Bog grass blackens whaur ye go
Smoke split shielings and the clammerin o bairns
Bone cracked mithers in yer wake
Heirt-scaud ruin fae the valleys tae the cairns
Driven by a drouth ye canny slake
Crib tale shapit unner creakin heather thatch
Howf born craitur o the nicht
Auld sangs spake aboot the maidens ye would ******
Fleggit bairns tae keep intil the licht
True? Naw, havers, juist the blaflum o wives
God nivver biggit ocht sae fell
But ae bairn crouchin in the ruins o its life
Can think o naethin else the tale tae tell
Blin, lost, forwandert fae the shattered faimly hame
Warslin wi fear tae unnerstan
White winds whistle as he gies the beast a name
And dragons whiles can take the form o man.
Apr 11, 2011
Apr 11, 2011 at 2:39 AM UTC
132
I bring an unaccustomed wine
To lips long parching
Next to mine,
And summon them to drink;
Crackling with fever, they Essay,
I turn my brimming eyes away,
And come next hour to look.
The hands still hug the tardy glass—
The lips I would have cooled, alas—
Are so superfluous Cold—
I would as soon attempt to warm
The bosoms where the frost has lain
Ages beneath the mould—
Some other thirsty there may be
To whom this would have pointed me
Had it remained to speak—
And so I always bear the cup
If, haply, mine may be the drop
Some pilgrim thirst to slake—
If, haply, any say to me
“Unto the little, unto me,”
When I at last awake.
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525
I think the Hemlock likes to stand
Upon a Marge of Snow—
It suits his own Austerity—
And satisfies an awe
That men, must slake in Wilderness—
And in the Desert—cloy—
An instinct for the **** the Bald—
Lapland’s—necessity—
The Hemlock’s nature thrives—on cold—
The Gnash of Northern winds
Is sweetest nutriment—to him—
His best Norwegian Wines—
To satin Races—he is nought—
But Children on the Don,
Beneath his Tabernacles, play,
And Dnieper Wrestlers, run.
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Clothes: to compose
The furtive, lone
Pillar of bone
To some repose.
To let hands shirk
Utterance behind
A pocket's blind
Deceptive smirk.
To mask, belie
The undue haste
Of breast for breast
Or thigh for thigh.
To screen, conserve
The pose, when death
Half strips the sheath
And leaves the nerve.
To edit, glose
Lyric desire
And slake its fire
In polished prose.
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I love too much; I am a river
Surging with spring that seeks the sea,
I am too generous a giver,
Love will not stoop to drink of me.
His feet will turn to desert places
Shadowless, reft of rain and dew,
Where stars stare down with sharpened faces
From heavens pitilessly blue.
And there at midnight sick with faring,
He will stoop down in his desire
To slake the thirst grown past all bearing
In stagnant water keen as fire.
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Night comes
r
o l l i
n g
down again
in painted coats
of thick onyx
clouding my vision
as if a brightly-striped
cuttlefish,
sister of squid
has enveloped me
in its
dark liquid
sea ink
an opaque vapor
for protection,
a shimmering
sheild against
disillusionment
pain of potential
loss
endless strands
of longing
knotting in my
hair like kelp
keeping me rooted
to the sea floor,
feet ensconced in
the soft squish
of muck and earth
Miraculously,
I breathe,
as if a sea nympth,
a mermaid
holding on to
the silvery scales
of her reality
indigo-dipped
in deepest iridescence
blending with fronds
of vibrant greens
and I am floating
within a vast membrane
of brine
somehow nuturing,
liquid cushion
of womb-water
letting it slake
the piquancy of thirst
that bursts my tongue
into succulence
Spiked in sea stars
like thorny crowns,
I reach out to
discover new textures
puncture the dark
with my fingers
enfold those waters
to me,
letting them
rock the soul
of my soul
the heart
of the seed
of my heart
and allow my
sonar, as powerful
as a whale's
encompassing call
to surge up
through nautical miles
of ocean depths,
buoyed through layers
of waves
up unto
the winds
that ride,
ever-tenderly,
the surface
of
the
dawn
Sep 12, 2016
Sep 12, 2016 at 3:21 PM UTC
Stay well beautiful childs
Of this night
Of this night forever
My fragile child of strung silver white hair
And that air echoes forever
My silver child of the endless shores
My angel child sing for me
Of dreams and angel things
Stand strong in the evening wind
Bend as though an angel in prayer
And sing for me of the endless
You know it's times like these my child
Where I could spit in the wind
That I could break the evening waves
That like a light in the dark I'm searching for a way to go on
For I've got a reason but she's a distance away
It's been years of searching
The decades echo on
And I'm still here with my long hair and gnarled skin
But it's amazing what a woman can do
So I search on for you
And I'll make her hair the silver streams
And her body the cradle of the valley
And the rising mountain sides
And her lips the sweetest kiss for you
I'll make her ***** so soft and warm
And her voice of angel's harmony
And I'll scratch on in the darkness
Black with my claws until I find her flaws
Even and smooth and her love here just for you
And if I find her flaws
I don't care it's a wide world
And her smile like the sun
Like the gates in the mountainside
And may her river flow and slake our thirst
And if I find her flaws
I'll smooth them over for you
May her crown shine as though the radiance in the sky
And I shall dance in her fires
And her eyes rejoice for we are her lovers
May her breast heave with joy for we are her ones
And if I find her flaws I'll smooth them over for you
And may her belly be deep and dire with the darkest lust for life
And love for me and you
And may her heart burst with love and stand true
As though the bend of that angel in prayer
And the song that sings on in the open air
Apr 4, 2021
Apr 4, 2021 at 3:33 AM UTC
* *Once in thoughting so profound,
exhilarated with a bottle found. . .
. . .slake'd it up yet still I got it,
passed-out drunk, woke up, forgot it?* *
Feb 4, 2017
Feb 4, 2017 at 8:03 PM UTC
Christmas at the inlaws, posed great challenges because
Was a chance at first impressions I could make
The family quite a bunch, secret Santa, formal lunch
All would test, but there was something more at stake
Further to their traditions, the Australian institution
Back yard cricket, the game in which I must partake
Both nervous and excited, see I love it unrequited
For impressions twas the icing on the cake
I considered myself skilled, both flamboyant and strong willed
And the game very seriously I would take
The brother and the dad, the biggest threats I saw I had
To dominate for the glory I would slake
With lunch dusted and done, we went out into the sun
Inspect the pitch, had it a fresh mow and a rake
A slope to orchard side, sticks as wickets, bail astride
Chose to bowl, the game was on make no mistake
Much to my surprise, dad was good, I did surmise
I bowled well, but his batting didn't break
He retired steeled, and I went out into the field
For his respect, and his daughter's, I'd not flake
When my turn came to bat, the brother bowled one flat
Out at my toes, applying heat, see if I'd quake
But I settled into play, and hit them all around the way
Was time to showcase and leave them in my wake
I retired not out too, and dad to bat again was due
Keen to bowl at him despite the muscle ache
At the last I took his stump, and the crowd well they did jump
Saw my determination was one that wouldn't shake
The game renewed my bond, for his daughter and beyond
To join this man, and his family was the sake
Mum called time for tea, and we left the field with glee
We were one now, and it was time for cake.
Oct 15, 2018
Oct 15, 2018 at 12:00 AM UTC
He knows what lies below.
This is where it all began: here
Beneath the bubbling sludge and ******* mud.
This is the home brew, the cocooning grounds.
His sturdy boots trudge through,
Hefting questions and glasses askew.
Somewhere to the side a fat swamp prince
Composes bog rhymes in ribbit meter.
Each squelching step sets a buzzing bunch
Of crystal dragons zipping away to
Slick peridot pontoons. A loon swoons
The expeditioner with a sobbing cry. He
Has said goodbye to reservations, to the
Long-dead preservation rights. He slogs through
The buzzing night. Yellow daggers clench
Between scaly steeltrap snappers and stones
With eyes blink in languid surprise, unnoticed.
He is lost, dying, unsure of his quest. He needs a
Cure. He knows it lies here, in the beginning place.
Their faces haunt his deathly guts and crush
His straining heart with need - need for the solution.
Need to survive, to prolong his life - alone!
So alone: the last. If only he could rest.
His nostrils quiver with the homesick stench
Of tails becoming legs and nipping lips sprouting
Sticky tongues. The answer, he is here for the
Only answer. Something below, below, down
In the dredges of history - in the slime of
Centuries, rotless and preserved. He will find it:
Some link, some closer thing he can revive
And test and rest as bedrock for his life.
A foot sticks in the overfriendly tar. No,
He will not pause. He has come too far.
In the birthing grime, some hungry memory wakes.
It knows what lies above, it thirsts to cease it.
It reaches, roils, pulls, rips with smelly squish-fingers -
Thirsting and thirsting to slake. It longs to reveal
To show, to make known to the traveler.
(All he has searched for is found here, it knows,
Organized and close. Held and safe below)
It reaches, grabs - thirsty - presses him into
A false step. A slip. A skritching clipboard
Of statistics curses in rustling indignance
As it flutters to the mud above a splattered head.
Science-frozen lungs fill with dread -
With life-giving peat. (It will show him) He ***** in
And burbles out a scream. (what he wants, show him)
This is where it begins, (this is his dream!) where it ends.
Now he knows what lies below. He lies - curled -
Quenched from growth. The eyes of unnoticed
Stones blink in surprise. Soaring swamp lyrics
Rise, a loon swoons with a sobbing cry.
He curls in peace and drifts alone
Now he knows what lies below.
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 30, 2010 at 7:10 PM UTC
Imagine life as one long dark night
Inconceivable, a life sans Light
Heat came with the Light
The earth and the oceans
giant sinks made with great insight
The light turned green with leaves
giving birth to thousands of trees
that served to keep very clean
the air for life to breathe in
The trees also made flowers
and fruits as food in their bowers
to transmit the Light and heat
to diverse forms of hearts that beat
Recycling was cleverly inbuilt
Light, a genius to the hilt
But alas arrived on the scene
the naked ape in all his sheen
He was the proverbial monkey wrench
born with a fist that he would often clench
Although he arrived
late on the stage
the ape thrived
under the delusion
he was all the rage!
Morning and evening
this biped walked
tall his shadows
made by the Light
and foolishly thought
he was bigger than
The Light
With his puny little brain
this ape wore a blinker
And started to tinker
calling himself a thinker
Many inventions he
did make
his own unquenchable
thirst to slake
he never thought beyond
the me
for he was all
he wanted to see!
Now the modern ape dwells
in a world
of his thoughts
dark are his thoughts
for his mind is a closed sky
he lives unconscious
always in deep slumber
till the day he goes under
What a wasted life
he leads
Without living the life
of consciousness
given only to him
by the Light!
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 11:32 PM UTC
The hour is slim!
the time to entwine
with her
and with advantage
inhale
the heavy offering
from between the jaws
of her open thighs.
Persephone's tasty flesh
renders her cleft
of wet truth-
she can slake this thirst-
can assuage my ache
when, enthralled against
the serpent earth,
with legs knotted,
we lay tangled
in ancient ruin.
words and foto Tommy Carroll
re-edit
Aug 3, 2015
Aug 3, 2015 at 2:29 PM UTC
I have been urged by earnest violins
And drunk their mellow sorrows to the slake
Of all my sorrows and my thirsting sins.
My heart has beaten for a brave drum's sake.
Huge chords have wrought me mighty: I have hurled
Thuds of gods' thunder. And with old winds pondered
Over the curse of this chaotic world,-
With low lost winds that maundered as they wandered.
I have been gay with trivial fifes that laugh;
And songs more sweet than possible things are sweet;
And gongs, and oboes. Yet I guessed not half
Life's symphony till I had made hearts beat,
And touched Love's body into trembling cries,
And blown my love's lips into laughs and sighs.
1.8k
is different for each meandering
but arises unbidden though there
must be a prompt a spring a welling-
up that begins to trickle down the page
as the current courses down this arm
to fingertips grippimg the pen lightly
but firm enough to make the marks
and trickle a stream to slake again
my thirst. Wyre ? Ribble ? Mersey ?
Thames ? Rhine ? Danube ? Ganges ?
Amazon - yes immense over life as Amazon.
(c) C J Heyworth
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 3:15 PM UTC