"sluicing" poems
Orcas in Puget Sound
Along the road, abandoned wild apple trees bend
with their heavy loads, dusty skirts of blackberry bushes
purpling fingers, piercing flesh
mouths ringed with berry juice, vampires all.
Along San Juan Island salmon leap clear
out of the briny water, just yards ahead of their predators,
Orcas, dorsal fins curving shiny black, sluicing and slicing
the surface like sharpened knives
They have bred with one another for 10,000 years
trolled these waters through famine, earthquakes, world wars
through shifting continents, glacial avalanches,
through the extinction of whole civilizations.
Standing on a cliff, my daughter and I
watch the Orcas churning the water - studies in grace
the largest gem on the necklace of a great food chain
and when we sleep we too chase
the great King Salmon of our deepest dreams,
the fathers we lost, the currents that bear along children
Translucent jellyfish, palm sized, breath below
sideways exhale, convulsive inhale
umbrellas opening and closing a thousand years or more
sliding through forests of brown kelp where mollusks cling
We have clung like this to one another, with my body
thrown over hers for protection and her exhaling away from me
If Mama Orca keeps her young close, so will I
If there are salmon to chase and harbor seals to command, so we will
Arcing in the late August sky
slapping and parting the surface, over and over
the whales, lords of the Sound, swim in our brains as we sleep
sparkle against blackening waters
You are of my body from my body cleaving there for 10,000 years
Whatever quarrels there are on land vaporize
In the presence of these creatures,
arcing against all that is temporal, vicious, small,
studies in power and grace
The tide pulls out, skimming across rocks and oysters in their muddy beds
But this need to care for you remains as big as an Orca
your appetite for adventure as voracious
and I watch you, my child, disappearing with summer
into high school, into womanhood, into
the salty, light-dappled ocean
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 4:15 PM UTC
All sounds have been as music to my listening:
Pacific lamentations of slow bells,
The crunch of boots on blue snow rosy-glistening,
Shuffle of autumn leaves; and all farewells:
Bugles that sadden all the evening air,
And country bells clamouring their last appeals
Before [the] music of the evening prayer;
Bridges, sonorous under carriage wheels.
Gurgle of sluicing surge through hollow rocks,
The gluttonous lapping of the waves on weeds,
Whisper of grass; the myriad-tinkling flocks,
The warbling drawl of flutes and shepherds' reeds.
The orchestral noises of October nights
Blowing ( ) symphonetic storms
Of startled clarions ( )
Drums, rumbling and rolling thunderous and ( ).
Thrilling of throstles in the keen blue dawn,
Bees fumbling and fuming over sainfoin-fields.
2.4k
Every day, sluicing into the next,
watching as the world gets vexed.
People asking questions,
beginning to stand up.
The world it is a changing child.
As I watch you grow up.
There's now communication,
between the voiceless masses.
The greed of some ,becoming clear
as time falls and passes.
People asking questions,
beginning to rise up.
I just want a safe world child.
As I watch you grow up.
Men will fight, they always have,
its written in the stars.
But they can't divide,
or try to hide.
The truth that's in our hearts.
Always ask those questions,
and son always stand up
for what is right, against what's wrong.
As I watch you grow up.
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 8:07 AM UTC
It is a smile on the turpitude of scorching sun that inflicts on us
A harbinger from the kingdom of heaven.
Descending from above -soothing ,dancing ,sizzling mizzling and torrential at times,
Sluicing down the earth bed ,end to end, wherever it touches.
It has power to sustain this world
It has the power to raze this world
It has the power to ornament this world
It made this abode a rarest one in the matrix of the whole universe
From past to present, ever and forever.
It is a presence felt as long as the earth is green,the sun shines,
The ocean whirls and the moon chuckles,
Be it called -the clouds,rain ,life or water
All in one the manifestation of the other.
A benediction from the Soul Supreme
To which we all owe our existence.
By D.R.Mohanty
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 2:36 PM UTC
Inside, Your cancer's beating heart
My ******* shakes, dirt dust gone
I swipe the sand away. For every ounce of ****
Laughing out meaty red raw steaks and size zero thighs.
- For everythingsobad. You rattle my dream box with your sweet blue face and your gauges for neither being an idiot or being human. Too cute of you booboo. Captivity claws at you, you big bafoon, intolerant, shuffling your predicates back and forth during your 12am nonsensical ******** So long as it doesn't interfere with your curfew.
Like soggy altered-state popcorn. Your butter catches more flies than knives, the inauthentic gestures spattering over the rhythms and rolls of your fingertips is torture to watch. Kitchen countertop influenza. A tired dictionary of sad words, poor misfortunes, tired eyelids, silty and sandy crusty inside corners of the eyes
.rearing privilege
countertop crawlers. inaudible coos used by muses who can't keep their musings from tangling the long distance dial tone soaring through the ears like an Italian operatic melodrama. A horse, three brides, and a funeral. One woman, a sick child, blindness, blinding caused by toxins of the body stuck inside your gelatinous fishlike eyelids. Where's there an eye bib and a lance when you need one? A nifty electric toothbrush shank with extra reach and plaque protection. You're the kitchen sink they threw in, a budget meeting with a data analysis staph infection. A government where nobody wins. All the kids grow up with thin skin and an aorta with no ventricles in it. It's like the cynical prison system that we had to survive in our 8th grade basement dungeon. Thundering, curmudgeons drugging sluggishly, **** teen thugs. Preteen pornstars sluicing cash through their meaty canals, ******* the ******** and ******* the back bare in a messy afternoon of **** ******* Crusty infectious rumors made worse by brothers and moms, eating handfuls of Norco just to keep the family strong.
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 7:16 PM UTC
He plunged his hand in the half-fitted
electrical socket, absorbing electrons
and sluicing them through to his core.
A recreation fit for a man of no station.
The nightmare of homelessness’ prospect,
the jarring from entrepreneur to beggar
was not a loosely whispered theme
but the pocket-guarding we recognize,
whose opening threatens to spill
more than simple vanity.
His watched as his insides tumbled
into the street, broken beans of pride
nestled between the acid
and the hernia he gave himself
coughing out the last of his security
amongst the well-wishers
attempting to shield themselves from his need.
Discomfiture had not yet defecated itself
through his seams and the letters and links
he sent out as a man trying to hold a lifeboat
without the fervor of clinging hands.
The ache to survive not a desperate one,
desperation having kicked itself out
over the politeness of circumstances
that called for something else.
Turning back into himself, he *****
his fingers as he pulls himself out
of the electrical socket, and walks to pick up
his innards on the street where they lay,
his pride now a forgotten thing
like the pocket-guarded slacks
with the loose seams.
Mar 1, 2021
Mar 1, 2021 at 6:41 PM UTC
I got bunches of hope,
full of honey and milk,
rooted to your slope,
dressed in a pinkish silk,
It is craving your babyface,
wandering around your manhood,
invoking copious amounts of grace,
In order to devour as much charm as it can,
gently sluicing sediments from your weary right palm,
massaging it twice and coating it with fragrant balm.
There, In the centre of our old black and white patio,
I am Injuring the rushing longing inside my ruins.
that dares to leap onto your shoulders and make poems.
What sacrifice could I assume to make our souls entwined with a curse of permanence?
Aug 1, 2023
Aug 1, 2023 at 11:54 AM UTC
Falling over the lip of the precipice
Into inky stillness
Where the heart sings dirges
Of the dead and lost souls
Holes poked through and dripping muddy waters
Like the sons and daughters
Of the god of decay
Rusting in the back of the pantheon
Running on down into the catacombs
Of black corridors and Minotaurs
Weeping for salvation
Red hearts beating on pikes in blue flames
That burn hot but no light
Nothing to bright the abject savagery of the surroundings
These things show no mercy
That hold old souls under rusted grates
Sluicing juices into terra firma
Thousands of feet below sea level
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 10:31 PM UTC
even after all this time, your still, quiet form slumbering beside me never ceases to amaze me, those long eyelashes, longer than the length of my thumbnail, fluttering against my cheek still make my heart quiver, the essence of you lingering on my lips hasn’t failed to stay sacred to me. all this time & the simple happenstance of your perpetuate presence warms me to the core. i cannot, have not, will never take you for granted, not when your soothing silence is as captivating as when you speak, not when you are the most breathtaking discovery i continue to make day by day by day. you have taught me how to savor, drink my coffee in slow sips sluicing down my throat, the pauses between swallows made for languid eye contact with you. you have laid me down & loved me to breathy, shivering pieces, we have charted the topography of one another’s bodies with needing fingers, a little more “touch me” than i knew i could feel. my head always races in labyrinthine circles but you slow it to a halt with your lips & skin & brimming heat. i mean, maybe i’m a little broken, maybe even a lot, but with you, i don’t mind so much anymore.
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 7:46 PM UTC
I ran through the fields, in search of things I love,
To the world, I would give, not once but twice, my soul.
Tasted the lies of joy and tales of dreams,
Made-believe, of painted scenes.
Baleful clouds would form, to cover the cheery skies.
The thunders roared and fired with light.
Weary was my soul, as the rain, they would fall.
Sluicing my dreams, that I held with pride.
Revealing bare nakedness, of one astray and dried.
Stretched, before me, were the hands of a man.
The scares on his hands, seems like a man I knew.
Intimate, we were, in the days of my youth.
The nails held him not, to the tree, on which he died,
But his love . . . . again, was affirmed in me.
The tears that flowed freely down my face,
Was the moment I found my hiding place.
A sanctuary of hope,
Of acceptance and grace.
For the scares you bore, will forever be,
A testimony of love, that you have for me . . . .
Dec 14, 2009
Dec 14, 2009 at 12:00 AM UTC
We dredge secrets,
That's the start,
Panning love from art.
Our words wash over
Like sluicing water,
To clean the buried heart.
Crack the hard rock
To reach motherlode;
Veins enrich us,
With jewels to share.
Float to the summit
On romantic trysts;
Reclaim me from
An open pit
With deep drill
Diamond bits.
These small gems
We call poems
Are sweet as gold
From honeycombs.
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 2:13 PM UTC
i stroke the water
with amphibian grace....
plastic protuberent eyes
bob up above....
then down below
.....disecting view
sky blue../...to aqualine
aquamarine.. black line
water sluicing off...
latex bundled, bumpled head
in streaming rivulets...
legs creating rhythmic geometrics....
arms parting waters to glide.........
my frogskinned self.....
is irregularly pattern
....dead fish white,
and sunkissed brown,
......on appendages
bright cerulean, slashed
with swirled butter yellow.
.....wrapped across the
overotound body...
glide onward frog girl...
....through...
the crisp chlorine clean pond...
thoughtless.... except for stroke
and lapnumber.
we.... the army of lapsswimmer
frogs.... are a silent breed
our territorial sound/call is the
regulated plash of arm or leg
.....against surface water
as we swim....always....
in straight lines.....
......that etch away miles....
and
...our overindulgent..
land based......
...vices
we are the water monks .....
of penance and self improvement
....grimly discharging our vespered canon of strokes....
before fluidly lifting our... watersilked
bodies back onto the reality
of land ......leaving
our amphibian grace
........adrift
....in the wake of daily need
Mar 29, 2014
Mar 29, 2014 at 3:49 PM UTC
your body is orange plastic,
the shade of wilted jack-o-lanterns,
l'ame is a disposable razor,
and your hair is my hair, severed,
i cannot place the bishop
on the opposing diagonal any more
than place you in or out of an awful dream:
each time you touch me, callous caress,
is a slit to pruned fingers,
the nightmare in water
sluicing through soggy skin
to balloon in my palms
clown's animals,
wrapped in drowning matter,
and burst.
i sometimes wish upon whatever **** rock'll listen
that my voice could stay the swells,
but most days i swell myself,
and stay to sing you storms,
precipitation is my forte
but you could always smell
the rain on its way.
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 10:53 PM UTC
STOP!
wading around in my oatmeal your feet are too big and i fear you'll break the bowl
mouthword form NASTY!vendettas
hot mud
sluicing through your fingers in and around the cup
SQUELCH!
drink it eat it smear it all over your face
DO NOT
hunt snakes for they will eat your brains like the paint you really are
in your ear
PILE DRIVE IT
get your anger out
be happy
feet make smiles on the floor
dancing away from you till you fall on your face
with a thump
OUCH
feet dancing on dragging all around the house
into the bathroom
down the stairs
BUMP BUMP BUMP
out the door
down the street
and into the oatmeal
GET OUT OF MY ******* OATMEAL!!!!!
all we want to do is eat your brains.
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 4:26 PM UTC
There were times when
your voice was like
smooth soothing thunder
it rolled across my skin
made me shiver
as we slid under our sheets—
Other times we had
lightning in our eyes
that sparked
crackled
flared
lit up the room
always in harsh relief
tension allowed to build—
sheets became
torrents
sluicing over our skin
until we were tangled
in damp heat
mist rising off our bodies
and a gleam of sunlight
chose that moment to
refract—
Oct 26, 2012
Oct 26, 2012 at 12:10 AM UTC
still the melancholy tears
drip on winds unbound,
slick silver needles cascading
in sheets, the puddles'
rippling waters reflecting
dark erratic heartbeats
punctured with jagged pain
of another home again found,
then bombed, and was disarrayed,
but the sluicing drops impenetrable
in the velvet blinds of my umbrella,
housing only warm lonely mortal tears,
tears of a maddening human heart.
Jun 27, 2017
Jun 27, 2017 at 7:39 AM UTC
"If I cannot bend the will of heaven,
I shall move hell."
Meadows of blood
are sluicing from my arm,
& courts of lithium
are bottled neatly.
This stream within me,
the red subliminal, latent,
needs beating back.
The noon sun kicks uselessly.
Something happened,
it had nothing to do with me,
it had nothing to do with
quiet cancerous woe,
nothing to do with the
underside of my mind.
I am quiet in the chair,
the blood-taker smiles at me
through alcohol bouquet,
compliments a yielding vein;
the blood pours and pours,
aching with subconscious.
Jan 23, 2021
Jan 23, 2021 at 2:35 AM UTC
It stood among no giants, no towers, no mountains.
Heedless to the wind, scattered without waving stalks and rusted leaves,
it chose to fall where it could not.
Jaded, perhaps, but not without sterling hands crafted to bellow.
A smattering of elbows chastised the woodpeckers pecking.
Ephemeral? Beautiful? Sober? Lassitude?
It fell among no gorges, no ravines, no swale.
Heedless to the rain, swamped in a dell without sliver streams,
it swelled up above the ratty woven sails.
Coarse, perhaps, but feather flew, vying for sky.
A copse of whitebark pine pillaged no battalions.
Mauve? Tender? Empyrean? Redolent?
It pattered among no small sorts, no ant hills, no chambers.
Heedless to the duke, sabotaged without sword, spear, stone,
it swallowed a hive of rabbits in no fields.
Desultory, perhaps, but not with quintessential ripples bent in space.
A harrowing panacea flourished in spindles of florid bristles.
Sempiternal? Susurrous? Honeyed? Irascible?
It churned among no whirlpools, no pots, no frosting.
Heedless to the maelstrom, sluicing in a myriad of slanted lanterns,
it chose to lure where it could not beguile.
Laconic, perhaps, but not without furtive gallows smoldering.
A candelabra of viridian mire spies spied genteel dragonflies.
Enormity? Enmity? Vestigial? Switchback?
It stood among nothing.
It stood enervated.
It stood.
It.
May 11, 2019
May 11, 2019 at 8:37 PM UTC
To this day I smoke cigarettes in their names
a collection of men
admittedly women
that after settling too long
sit somewhere between memories and strain.
I don't burden myself with the weight of their names
though a few of their impressions have become deepening stains
bruising, blemishing the favorite spots on my brain.
Earliest versions of the story have found personal inches on my skin
before I grew up I learned to let it leak in
sluicing through veins
burning the moments of where I had been
in attempts to remind myself of what remains.
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 1:55 AM UTC
You’re too used to your blunted ways
Worn habits of reason is why you stay
So tired of hearing the same arcane
From a heart that cashes in on pain
Grab your Sufi sluicing pan,
Ya Allah, let’s pull the gold of soul by hand
From this parched and grinning desert creek
Sift the dust and graveled speech
Unlearn the ways you understood
Mine the vein, the pay is good.
Trade the bone china we can’t afford
For tin cans, wool, and a Damascene sword.
Sep 23, 2014
Sep 23, 2014 at 12:03 AM UTC
I spiral happ’ly in,
I feel my flesh
dissolve to wet, to
gaseous mess
and flow flow flow
into the asterism
that is her extra latte French roast
Eye...
She asks, “What do you see?”
I see Himalayan diamond dust,
the wind as particle, sharing the
Sun in glints.
I see spiral arms and accretion discs.
I see stardust, moondust, lovedust
in great grand colorful interwebbings of
lust, of truth, of song, of delight, of Us.
I see RGB Grand Walls of stars;
organized in mind but cosmologically
principled.
I see the possibilities of galaxies -
Unformed
Adrift
Reaching
Cooling
Collecting
Heating
Sparking.
Life giving life.
Lifegiving, Life.
I see an unspoken Universe
of Dust -
Awake to Dance,
to dance to Life.
I see Love.
I see Beauty.
I see worlds not yet.
I see suns unshone.
I see comets unknown.
I see tidepools.
I see fields of fuzzies.
I see Seas.
I see mountains and valleys.
I see Forest.
I see Love.
I see her, and in her,
I see a world, a cosmos, a way;
a way I’d rather be.
A way I’d rather live.
I see Love.
I see her.
Through tears,
I see
the limitless warmth of an unlimited
Un iv er se
in her tawny toffee coffee
Eye.
Jan 27, 2019
Jan 27, 2019 at 3:24 PM UTC