"sluice" poems
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.
The austere sun descends above the fen,
an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this landscape of chagrin;
feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.
Last summer's reeds are all engraved in ice
as is your image in my eye; dry frost
glazes the window of my hurt; what solace
can be struck from rock to make heart's waste
grow green again? Who'd walk in this bleak place?
5.5k
Cockcrow harbour:
the gulls whining like tethered dogs
about rooftops
paliophobic cars and
grounded vessels..
Look:
on the hoary horizon
a glaucous strip
beguils
with backwater.
Not putting on a show
the frigid sea benumbed..
Easily,
with a tail of emerald jelly
skim a vanishing lane off that
lustrous sheet
and watch
the trailblazing mainland
scuttle.
Now,
Only scattered dreaming is possible.
In it's bachelor pad,
cradling over crinkles,
away from the meretriciosness
of validating the real by sharing it,
THE WIND
blusters off any veneer.
Here,
stale but spry,
fare your way around the inoffensive isle
to it's most shyest of harbours:
a mouth full of silver
saving it's breath.
The windows facing the sea
seem
black & white,
their wooden frames hooked to the wind,
the splattered gulls meow
your name
in a way
that's
personal.
Of course comes to mind.
The pines
are demanding a visit,
They're whispering
so you can hear them,
each as different as every snore,
these pines know
how to grow in the sand
and still reach for
the Nimbostratus with heads in unison.
The spaces
between their trunks illuminating
the blazing needles
raining down
painting the ground
familiar
to your lover's
skin texture:
Feel her closeness
from jilted borderwatchtowers
as she speads her mire
like no one's watching:
weedy and sugared
with bellflowers,
the waves in her shallow armpit
billeting a pair of white swans:
demurely they float
sometimes as pillows and sometimes
as question marks..
Go ask the seasoned locals,
they say the bones she parked
when she let her ice sheet melt
are portals
to her noble underbelly.
Hidden in the woods
reminiscent of your heart,
the red
tank-sized stone
is sealed,
but what the lighting reach cannot
the rain shall sluice apart
dumbly.
And though her hair has
come to be
the moss
black and hoarse
as sailor's beard,
there is still time.
The void says
her noisy neighbour is nothing
to die for.
The theadbear car with absent doors
incites
to drive her
in reverse gear
to the first few
days of holidays:
her golden locks a-blaze,
her arm around your
hind-sighted doppelganger.
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 2:20 AM UTC
Brigid was born on a flax mill farm,
Near the Cavan border, in Monaghan,
At Lough Egish on the Carrick Road,
The last child of the Sheridans.
The sluice still runs near the water wheel,
With thistles thriving on rusted steel.
Little's known of Nellie's early years;
Da died before she knew grieving tears,
They'd turn her eyes in later years.
She's eleven posing with her class,
This photo shows an Irish lass.
Her look is distant,
Her face is blurred,
But recognizable
In an instant.
She was schooled six years
To last a life,
Some math, the Irish,
To read and write.
Her Mammy grew ill,
She lost a leg,
And bit by bit,
By age sixteen,
Nellie buried her first dead.
Too young to be alone,
Sisters and brother had left the home.
The cloistered convent took her in,
She taught urchins and orphans
About God and Grace and sin.
There were no vows for Nellie then.
At nineteen she met a Creamery man,
Jim Lynch of the Cavan clan;
He delivered dairy from his lorry,
Married Nellie,
Relieved their worry.
War flared, men were few,
There was work in Coventry.
Ireland's thistles were left to bloom.
Nellie soon was Michael's Mammy,
Then Maura, Sheila and Kevin followed,
When war floundered to its end,
They shipped back to Monaghan,
And brought the mill to life again.
The thistles and weeds
That surrounded the mill,
Were scythed and scattered
By Daddy's zeal.
He built himself
A generator,
Providing power
To lights and wheel.
Sean was born,
Gerald soon followed;
Then Michael died.
A nine year old,
His Daddy's angel.
Is this what turns
A father strange?
Francie arrived,
Then Eucheria,
But ten months later
Bold death took her.
Grief knows no borders
For brothers and sisters.
We left for Canada.
Mammy brought six kids along,
Leaving her dead behind,
Buried with Ireland.
Daddy was waiting for family,
Six months before Mammy got free
From death's inhumanity.
Her tears and griefs weren't yet over,
She birthed another son and daughter;
Jimmy and Marlene left us too,
Death is sure,
Death is cruel.
Grandchildren came, she was Granny,
Bridget, Nellie, but still our Mammy.
She lived this life eduring pain
That mothers bear,
Mothers sustain.
And yet, in times of personal strain,
I'll sometimes whisper her one name,
Mammy.
Feb 12, 2016
Feb 12, 2016 at 5:09 PM UTC
Mariana in the Moated Grange
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
3k
You are the
liquid sugar
I rub into
my skin
soaked
through to my
pores so
deep within
on a cellular
level as I
gulp it down
swish in saliva
in liquid love
sounds
washed through
my system
in textured
spin
you balance
out the thickness
of my insulin
you
pique
hot
energies
into blush-fused
crush
swirling
endorphins
and hormones
in maelstrom rush
my cheeks
on fire,
ripe fruits
drip
juice
I must
breathe
in staccato
to control
this
sluice
But when I
get peak-high
and then
slope
so
low
you harmonize
the taut,
slick pull
of my
undertow flow
It's just a matter
of a few
words, syll-a-
bles spoken
velvet-voiced
cool
smooths
the rough
of my
broken
So please
inject it,
fresh
into the river
of my blood
Bring it over,
hot sugar,
before I
surge
into
flood
Oct 1, 2016
Oct 1, 2016 at 2:42 PM UTC
Bridget was born on a flax mill farm,
Near the Cavan border, in Monaghan,
At Lough Egish on the Carrick Road,
The last child of the Sheridans.
The sluice still runs near the water wheel,
With thistles thriving on rusted steel.
What's known of Nellie's early years?
Da died before her grieving tears,
But burn her eyes in later years.
She's eleven posing with her class,
This photo shows an Irish lass.
Her visage blurred,
Her eyes look distant,
Yet recognizable
In an instant.
She attended school for six short years,
The three R's, some Irish,
And a Doctorate in tears.
Her Mammy grew ill,
She lost a leg,
And bit by bit,
By age sixteen,
Nellie buried her first dead.
Too young to be alone,
Sisters and brother had left the home.
The cloistered convent took her in,
She taught urchins and orphans
About God, Grace and sin.
There were no vows for Nellie then.
At nineteen she met a Creamery man,
Jim Lynch of the Cavan clan;
He delivered dairy from his lorry,
Married Nellie
To relieve their worry.
War flared up, and men were few,
So the work in Coventry
Left Ireland's thistles to bloom.
Nellie soon was Michael's Mammy,
Then Maura, Sheila and Kevin were carried.
When war floundered to its end,
They shipped back to Monaghan,
To work the flax mill again.
The thistles and weeds
That surrounded the mill,
Were scythed and scattered
By Daddy's zeal.
He built himself a generator.
And powered the lights and the wheel.
Sean was born,
Gerald soon followed;
Then Michael died.
A nine year old,
His Father's angel.
(Is this what turns
A father strange?)
Francie arrived,
Then Eucheria,
But ten months later
Bold death took her.
Grief knows no family borders
For brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.
We left for Canada.
Mammy brought six kids along,
Leaving her dead behind,
Buried with Ireland in familiar songs.
Daddy was waiting for family,
Six months before Mammy got free
From death's inhumanity.
Her tears and griefs weren't yet over,
She birthed another son and daughter;
Jimmy and Marlene left us too,
Death is sure,
Death is cruel.
Grandchildren came, she was Granny,
Bridget, Nellie, but still our Mammy.
She lived this life eduring pain
That mothers bear,
Mothers sustain.
And yet, in times of personal strain,
I'll sometimes whisper her one name,
Mammy.
May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016 at 2:49 PM UTC
Coarse granite slabs split the earth
glinting at the fractured sunlight.
Sly winds whip and lash the grass and gorse;
disconsolate skies weep upon the land.
Rain rushes in to bloat the meagre streams,
and gulleys slash the sinewed clay.
Pulse and sluice. Erosion fashions
new forms of contoured legends.
Ragged crows snag the horizon
blasted and cursed. Little else
between the walls of weathered stones:
hand-laboured one on one.
The moor muscles its independence,
frowning at the low land,
bragging to the skies
its ancient splendour.
Aug 17, 2010
Aug 17, 2010 at 6:56 AM UTC
The mine shaft’s gaping mouth
yawns like the throat of an old, useless god.
Gnats hover by the scattered rocks.
This is real not a set, or a scene,
a spit of dirt shot through the sluice, all things like
a picture cut to kiss my America expectation.
In the surrounding bush, tamaracks curve towards the clouds.
The clouds where, above the furry tips of conifers, cataracts
plummet down mountainwalls, and ask:
“afraid?” And I am, I am. I fear the sheer
slopes of tough granite slashing the giant sky
in two; the hard-edged mountain face. The expansive air.
And this split is brooding old and unknowable
tunneling briskly into the unfamiliar, bruising
Montana a grisly purple-red
when the sun swings underground
and shades the hot **** by the mine with cool night as
behind it, the mine appears to growl.
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 9:09 PM UTC
All perish whence they quest for immortality,
Such foolish dreams will result in fatality.
Critters struggle in nets of ersatz reality,
Hormonal clashes unbalance our morality.
Under the influence by budding, ravishing thyme,
Oft' that sunny beam leaves me doing pantomime.
Chaste clues and envy droughts left me mellowing,
Such pain ipso facto I can't kiss this porcelain.
My seat of notions drives me to calculate,
While undead, fatigued, I falsely formulate.
Floundering in viscous fluids, I am drowning...
My verdant sail is half-mast: lonely, frowning.
Within moon-lit meadows, shadows flow cursively,
Beyond the kaleidoscope lay a rustic key.
Beg you pardon the rust and blackened fissures,
Pardon those slights to open eternal treasures.
To crave two heart beats align in synchrony,
To sluice my fingers through the strands of memory.
Embracing silvery asps soaring on the breeze,
My sight spies thy adieu and I shatter apiece.
Un-writing errors, distantly, unstumbling,
The abyss: now a star, wings unfurling.
'Tween the heavens fell meteoric golds,
Sinusoidal cascades of such sublime codes.
Traversed steadily upon the gilded firmaments,
Was so small, blind to the unseen monuments.
To be offered aristocratic absolution,
From my humble plebeian resolution.
I am sublime. 'Hold my dichotomous, nay,
Such cantankerous introversion within, eh?
Sep 22, 2010
Sep 22, 2010 at 3:40 PM UTC
"Mariana in the Moated Grange"
(Shakespeare, Measure for Measure)
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
1.8k
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 2:11 PM UTC
traffic trodden crab apples
and choke cherries
sluice the sidewalk
not one wasp observed
the wasps this year are found
not around human food or trash cans
( sugar drunk, bat angry or absurd )
this year they thrive around cut grass
and chippings from outdoor furniture finishing
with this appetite
what are they prepping for ?
Oct 22, 2023
Oct 22, 2023 at 9:44 PM UTC
Through the sluice and trickle
upon my glassy world view,
I stare like the dead,
while waiting for you.
Though I see the storm,
My heart rages in its thunder,
Knowing you'll creep in soon,
Obliterating this nightmare wonder.
Unlike this thrashing rain,
slicing up my window pane,
I've seen the beds you've lain
in my jagged dreams:
where my spirit walks free
chasing my heart's silent screams;
connected to yours
like a ball and chain.
Oct 27, 2014
Oct 27, 2014 at 7:25 AM UTC
A stream of strawberry argot
and swift her auburn hair
let her shoal uptick in sluice
only a cheeseburger made grace
as her mamilla bare her cheek in crest there
if the goat made milk for perfect cheese
where she must have peas too
that keep her neat and trim
and with her dessert of ice cream
when she'll delight in luxury bob again.
Apr 8, 2017
Apr 8, 2017 at 9:41 AM UTC
My moods drain me down
To some immoderate sluice-gate,
They run down the grainy windows,
Clog the sand in the top of the hour-glass
Like bat's tears, like misplaced rainstorms
Looking for a cloud to hang out under.
All my temperaments are accidental,
Wrongly placed; too early or too late
Miscarriages of intention,
Predicaments of inattention.
All the inconsequential moments I inhabit,
I'm wearing thin, from changing my mind too often-
Why is there no groove for thinking,
No energy-saving secret gear?
Sometimes I sit absolutely still
In an uncomfortable position,
Hoping the powers that be will notice me;
Will see that I'm going nowhere, so slowly
And they will send some tempest to help move me along.
I'm also afraid they will send change;
The paralytic not only can't move,
He knows he can never move,
And his biggest fear
Is being thought capable of movement.
In that rapid swirling down the drain,
He wants someone to snag him on a branch,
Save and reclaim his manhood;
Not sit in a tree and watch him spiraling,
While repeating over and over,
Why don't you save yourself?
He knows it's too late for words;
The tears only add to the swelling river.
And if once I thought there was a savior on every corner,
I guess I just got tired of waiting-
Because the ones in the mirror only close their eyes now.
Normalcy both appalls and comforts me-
Why does it all appear so average,
As you go sprawling head first over the falls:
You know nobody elses life will change one iota,
And you know you're just paying some bill
You never even saw.
Aug 25, 2010
Aug 25, 2010 at 4:32 PM UTC
Embedded in the crease of streets
Lies litter from this wasteland world.
Grandiosity of trees despoiled by plastic bags
Shredded to a baleful wind-whipped bunting.
Cans and bottles glint in summer sun.
Their quenching duty done, they figure
In a losing landscape, tinged by neglect.
Dog-eared gutters crouch against the kerbs,
Lusting for a sluice of cleansing rain.
At least the leaves all lavished beauty once,
To cast a vibrant coloured throw
Across a calloused landscape
Through the gnarl of tarmac
And turgid, timeless traffic.
Jan 30, 2010
Jan 30, 2010 at 10:55 PM UTC
Compare cotton-cumbersome constraining,
from crops that appear planted clouds.
The thread count of the sublime silver,
cascade droplets shimmer and sluice sheer skin.
Weightless, transparent, contours to every curve and plane,
sliding slowly up feet, ankles, calves, thighs, and hips without a snag.
Vowels escape your tongue,
for a moment you are submerged,
in the universal solvent,
the cares of the world merely puddles.
May 16, 2012
May 16, 2012 at 12:44 PM UTC
Sensational curiosities of quarter-sized universes of human love and human flesh.
Gentle insane thoughtless violence cured in time's long sluice of betrayal,
Rancor, then betrayal, and then the frost. Never did I hear the twigget of the synthesizer max its flare.
Every mouth was a warship, the plumes coming up over the top of the spigot, sampler of the Neverspoke. Worships them, in the Hectares through the dross, the incumbent conflagration
Envelops life from venom thru a stra. Into the hutch the creeper shakes, like the
May 22, 2015
May 22, 2015 at 6:43 PM UTC
*She came…sat down so gingerly
We exchanged glances furtively
Said it all, understood it all
Utter silence, ecstatic agony.
She sat with lips trembling unable to speak
My heart sputtering, missing a beat
Ah! Those precious moments
When hours seemed like seconds.
Today
Memories blur & all that remains is etchings on a grey slate
Realities whisked away by the greatest slayer of all – cruel fate
I try to call out your name but can’t shout
I am left wondering what it was all about.
…The deafening silence is overpowering
Did it all happen? I am not too sure
If it did, it was love in divinity so pure
But whenever I look at the barricade of the grey slate
Memories come flooding in through the sluice gate.*
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 1:33 PM UTC
Like a clown that drowns in the echo of laughter after the show is done,
I run through the programme always looking behind,
expecting to find something I cannot see,
but that's me.
hoping I'll cope with the ketchup of history which is listed in the programme under subsection 3b.
I always felt in two places,hence the belt and the braces,never sure of myself, wherever I went I spent time looking around,testing the ground,making excuses,checking the exits,expecting the sluice gates to open and flush me out,push me out to where history exposes the truth in the posing and posturing.
At times it is comforting to hear the mad laughter knowing that what will come after is the silence,this may be the penance I have to endure, to be in the asylum knowing there is a cure,
to drown like the clown
still unable to see,
ketchup on the pages of
my history.
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 5:01 AM UTC
I walk to the newsstand over
blue gray cobblestone jumping up
my soles, the windows of
every mother in Viterbo
looking at my swaying arms,
at the very reason I love
the squint of eyes in morning sun.
Because I am free from anticipating
a slow sinking earth, hung twined,
hung taut, hung thin, hung dried,
peeling off the body like
scree, relenting.
Because I am ten.
From five lire scrunched in a fist, from
a father’s request for Il Messaggero,
steps can brim with direction, with place,
with an appetence for growing
a grown man would lunge at.
Could make a mute anchorite sing again
to an unsacred sky: “a son is a son as
a song is a song, this is that I am
is why I belong.”
I walk to the newsstand
under glaring windows, under
the look of all Viterbo’s mothers,
under the sluice of morning sun
that piques the eyes as sliced brine,
and the stand is shuttered.
Dirt metal slats I touch once
to make sure, and then I walk
straight back, back with the sun now
behind, illuminating stone, in front of me.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 6:29 PM UTC
☪ ☠ ☮ ☪ ☠ ☮ ☪ ☠ ☮ ☪ ☠ ☮
Exporting democracy, whorelets and song
You dwell in the center of endless supply
as customer-king you can never be wrong.
Your choice is the answer—now shut up and BUY.
Gadgets with touchscreens and upgrades to boot –
Distractions and playthings to dazzle the eye;
Your choices are regal, your credit assured;
Your country is closing soon. Shut up and buy.
The Ishmaelite hordes are released from the dam
the sluice-gates are opened, the waters descend.
Our Empire, ignorant, closes its eyes
Babylonian currencies bank on the trend
Mohammedans know that the West is a Beast
and the least of their worries—their Caliph is nigh.
We shop as they’re chopping; expanding their brand.
The muezzin is wailing now: shut up and buy.
They hear and obey while you’re watching the game.
The refugee nations, with time on their hands,
flow over the borders demanding attention
Malign infiltration. Deception expands.
These newest dependents refuse to assimilate
whining of racism, milking the state
Government, clueless, declares them immaculate.
Holy diversity Batman—it’s late !
They wait for their moment. You’re scared to offend.
it’s the Christians you wish would oblige you and die
The Muslims, you know, are committed to peace
and that’s something to celebrate: shut up and buy.
No borders no flags, social justice, no war
(nor knowledge of history, conflict or God)
Universal utopia, scaffolded lies
crashing down (but you’re busy defining jihad)
Poor traumatized victims. Concern never ends
It’s our fault they are here: it’s a charity high.
They laugh in your face with your back to the wall.
Your nation’s invaded so shut up and die.
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 at 8:07 AM UTC
Some days blend well
with smiles and songs
and the passion of love
leaving swishing whirlpools inside
Some days settle down
as dregs in a teacup
the bitter dross
sticking to the froth around the edge
and the residue coming to the surface
as if constantly stirred
Some days, the mind’s slits open
and fancies sluice down
like a dam with shutters removed
or like birds fleeing away from a cage
then hands quiver and ink spills
Some days, I feel so alone
stretching me on the rack of pain
then I shut myself from the outside world
like a periwinkle withdrawn to its shell
hoping nothing,
sinking under dead weight
unable to feel if dead or alive!
Feb 1, 2021
Feb 1, 2021 at 10:29 AM UTC
The ghosts are attacking,they caught me out, slacking and sleeping through the day,if the ghosts had their way,they would shake me up,break me up,sweep me and keep me locked in my head.
I'm thinking that those ghosts have got to be dead, but I find that they're feeding on me, and running amok,pell mell ,chock a block,
In this binding I find a way to escape,don't sleep,stay awake,let the ghosts take the slow train and get out of my brain,flush them all down the drain,
just got to stay awake and alert and no matter how much it hurts me,it's the only way I see and the way to release.
The truce.
A piece of the peace or the rest of the rest I don't get,they won't let me alone,I can't eat,I'm becoming all skin and bone,which would be good, were I modelling the latest creations because skinny is cool in some men's imaginations,but what would they know about the dead and the dead slow,with looks that could **** those who don't fit their bill of what's acceptable to them,
but that's men,what did you expect,and the truth is no truce,no closing the sluice gates,the fates have me trapped between here and the next place,
full of grace,fair of face and a heavy heart, my eyes start to close as the ghosts rise around me,surrounded I'm bound once again.
Pain so they say is just that drumbeat when night meets your day and a slight thing to which you'll grow accustomed,I disagree,pain's just another mad moment running free and it always crashes head first into me,but I get used to it,it's just a constant yammering,stammering that hammers my soul,when the night's a black hole and day is a lifetime away.
When the ghosts have their fill and decide not to **** me but leave me,the funny thing is I miss them,what man am I to miss ghosts that would fly and disrupt me?
Tell me,
a contradiction, a contra addiction, predicting the best but expecting the worst,
I finally sleep.
Sep 3, 2013
Sep 3, 2013 at 9:06 AM UTC