"snatches" poems
For Al, who left us
With each passing poem,
The degree of difficulty of diving ever higher,
Bar incrementally niched, inched, raised,
Domain, the association of words, ever lesser,
Repetition verboten, crime against pride.
Al,
You ask me when the words come:
With each passing year,
In the wee hours of
Ever diminishing time snatches,
The hours between midnight and rising,
Shrinkage, once six, now four hours,
Meant for body restoration,
Transpositional for poetic creation,
Only one body notes the new mark,
The digital, numerical clock of
Trillion hour sleep deficit, most taxing.
Al, you ask me from where do the words come:
Each of the five senses compete,
Pick me, Pick me, they shout,
The eyes see the tall grasses
Framing the ferry's to and fro life.
Waving bye bye to the
End of day harbor activities,
Putting your babies to sleep.
The ears hear the boat horns
Deep voiced, demanding pay attention,
I am now docking, I am important,
The sound lingers, long after
They are no longer important.
The tongue tastes the cooling
Italian prosecco merging victoriously
With its ally, the modestly warming rays
Of a September setting sun,
finally declaring, without stuttering,
Peace on Earth.
The odoriferous bay breezes,
A new for that second only smell,
But yet, very old bartender's recipe,
Salt, cooking oil, barbecue sauce, gasoline
And the winning new ingredient, freshly minted,
Stacked in ascending circumference order, onion rings.
These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger, by force majeure,
Declares, here,
poem aborning!
Contract with this moment,
now satisfied!
Al, what you did not ask was this:
With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me.
_________________________________
(this poem more than most,
for its birth celebrates
my loss, your loss,
which cannot be exonerated 8/7/18)
_________________________________
written at 4:38 AM
September 8th, 2012
Greenport Harbor, Long Island
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 7:07 AM UTC
the bus poets
we are the modern day chimney sweeps,
the ***** black faced coal miners of the city,
digging up its grit, toasted with its spit,
the gone and forgotten elevator operators,
the anonymous substitutable,
still yet glimpsed occasionally,
grunts of urbanity
provoking a surprised
whaddya know!
once like the bison and the buffalo,
we were thousands,
word workers roaming the cities,
the intercity rural routes and the lithe greyhounds
across the land of the brave,
free in ways the
founders wanted us to be
us, the stubs and stuff,
harder working poor and lower cases
we were the bus poets,
sitting always in the back of the bus,
where the engines growls loudest,
seated in the - the most overheated
in winter time, so much so
we nearly disrobed,
and then come the summer,
we were blasted with a joking
hot reverie from the vents,
but vent, no, we did not!
no - we wrote and wrote of all we heard,
passion overheated by currents within and without,
recording and ordering the
snatches and the soliloquies of the passengers,
into poem swatches;
the goings on passing by,
the overheard histories,
glimpsed in milliseconds, eternity preserved,
inscribed in a cheap blue lined five & dime notebook,
for all eternity what the eyes
sighed and saw
books ever passed
onto the next generation in boxes from the supermarket,
attic labeled, then forgotten beside the outgrown toys
with our names writ indelible with the magic of
black markers
if you stumble upon a breathing scripter,
let them be, just observe,
as they, you,
these movers and bus shakers,
as they, observe you
tell your children,
you knew one in your youth,
then take them to the attic
retrieve your mother's and father's,
teach your children
how to read, how to see,
the ways of their forefathers,
the forsaken,
the bus poets.
Sep 29, 2017
Sep 29, 2017 at 7:53 AM UTC
Thank you for the memories,
The unexpected, sudden hits of nostalgia
Taking me back to carefree days
Of playing football after a summer rainstorm,
Of laughing in woodwork class,
Of my grandmother's awesome cakes.
Like time travel on the cheap,
You weather away the years,
And the strata of cynicism and regret,
Momentarily eroding my reality,
Revealing the manchild at my core,
Allowing him the briefest chance to once again explore.
But these are unpredictable reveries,
Three dimensional snatches of memories.
It's time they developed some kind of smell recorder,
Just like sights and sounds can be held for posterity.
But such technology would not compare to my physiological wonder;
Magically transforming scent into vivid memories.
Sep 20, 2018
Sep 20, 2018 at 1:57 PM UTC
The vicar's knickers look so fine
As they hang upon the line.
Flapping wildly in the breeze,
They're as sassy as you please.
They used to be a shade of grey,
But on the line, in the light of day,
They sparkle white as they hang about.
Even Mr. Clean would scream and shout.
People in the street stop and stare
As they admire the vicar's underwear.
Hanging there for all to see,
They seem to cry, "Look at me!"
The gathering crowd gives a sigh
When the vicar's knickers seem to fly
As they dance and twist upon the line,
Looking white and clean, and oh so fine.
Inside the house the vicar pleads,
"Dear wife, some underwear I need.
Without my knickers I cannot say
My sermon in the church today."
The vicar's wife has had enough
Of viewing her husband in the buff,
As he searches for another pair
Of sparkling, clean, white underwear.
"I know where to find a pair!
They're on the line, those underwear,"
Says the vicar's wife with a grin.
"I'll just go out and fetch them in."
The poor man waits and says a prayer
And hopes she finds those underwear.
He really wants to finish dressing
And go to church and say the blessing.
She snatches them from off the line
Where they've hung and looked so fine.
The crowd watches her take them down,
Those knickers, the whitest in all the town.
They'll have to come another day
To gawk and watch those knickers play.
The vicar needs that elusive pair
Of sparkling, clean, white underwear.
The vicar's just as pleased as punch
Because he had a sneaking hunch
He'd never see that last clean pair,
And he'd have nothing else to wear.
Now he's dressed and ready for the day,
And he can go to church and kneel and pray
Because he's wearing a lovely pair
Of sparkling, clean, white underwear.
Mar 10, 2012
Mar 10, 2012 at 2:28 PM UTC
Injustice!
Posted by Olivia Kent on June 4, 2013 at 3:11pm
View Blog
Suffer not thy children,
In a waiter service world of injustice,
Nothingness in a world of tragic poverty,
In a drizzle of tears,
The children drown
Emaciated children,
Not smiling as they die,
In world of war-craft,
Dying,
A little more each day,
Not smiling as they should,
Punished,
Living in a punitive world of cruelty,
Where craft of war is rife,
Screams,
Imagined in heads of strangers,
Insanity,
Piercing with horror,
Ears sickened,
By violent imagery envisaged,
Emaciated child,
*** bellied,
Gaunt,
Virtually lifeless,
Dead before death,
Snatches,
Life blood vanished,
Without request!
There is no youthful exuberance on this face,
Overjoyed,
Delighted,
I don't live in this place!
Copywrite Livvi Kent 04/06/2013
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 3:21 PM UTC
“Angelica arguta”,
He shows her his wildflowers
“Angelica Susannah”, he says.
And prodded further by her
His heart.
Lingers briefly with the night;
Her affection has power,
But not enough
To keep him
From marching off to fight.
Tristan, son of One Stab,
Brings wildness from the mountains.
Lovely woman from the East,
Fascinated by her,
His passion.
Revels in her bridal bower,
And stops her
Loving any other.
Alfred, eldest son of his father,
Full of rectitude and romance.
Angelica abandoned,
Adrift between the mountains
Becalmed far from the sea.
He takes advantage,
Snatches her soul with riches,
But never captures
Her longing heart.
Years pass and one son gone,
The other lost and mad.
Year of the red grass and
Happiness found
Is felt too soon.
Tristan loves young Isabel,
But Angelica is his doom.
Yet only he survives
The waves that lash her shore,
“Like water in the ice,
She breaks them.”
And in the Spring,
Is gone once more.
Angelica Susannah is buried
Above the box canyon in the meadow
Among the many dead.
Near Samuel’s heart,
The executed Isabel,
And others who follow soon.
Until only Tristan remains,
Left to hunt his nemesis,
The bear inside him.
And dream of one wife lost,
And a lover left behind:
Angelica Susannah
Beside whom he should lie.
He is slain by the bear in Sixty-three,
After forty years of solitude.
And laid to rest in the plot
Between two women he loved,
Isabel, his ingenuous wife
And Susannah, his tragic love.
Do their spirits meet at last
And wander the golden fields,
Or ride out to bathe in the hot springs,
Under the moon of the falling leaves?
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 10:37 AM UTC
unsure, uncertain,
of the laws invested
in the realms and reams
of poetry ingested,
am i addict,
or supplier,
retail consumer
or
wholesale supplier,
a mom & pop candy store,
or a metastasizing intelligence
that takes any thing, and all,
a solitary letter,
an instance of a sighting,
a gasping palpitation
and reformats it into
a hehe literary madhatter^ piece
you supply, I demand,
I supply, boy oh boy,
do I ever, but you never,
come to me directly asking,
write me a poem, thick or thin,
witty fitty or an overly looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong
e~pistle (a/k/a e~pistol)
yet the trade goes on and om,
the marketplace never closes,
except when periodically the
gatewaykeeper is slow to pay his bills,
and the trading centres are global scattered,
young entrepreneurs try to sell a single
piece, as if it was breaking news history,
and tired old men, review their lived,
eager to memorialize, so it's ok to forget,
in retro!spect perspective,
the mirror who cannot lie,
states affirmatively, you are
both ****** and dealer,
a corporation scientific
of ancient biblical origins,
a psalmist, a deacon,
a lyricist, but thankfully
not a singer,
an essayist who writes best
when ****** by tawny port wine,
who snatches inspiration with
equality of equity,
(wait! that's wrong,
the equity of equality,)
where he can
find, ***** city streets, the deaths
of heroes, the sunrise calm miracle
he drinks in daily, by rivers, by seas,
by estuaries brackish, and streams
of watered purity, the riveting bays,
the individualized glisten deflected
into my eyes, that each
contains one pure blessing within…. nml
Sep 27, 2025
Sep 27, 2025 at 9:24 AM UTC
A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages ***** and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
Jun 13, 2016
Jun 13, 2016 at 11:31 AM UTC
reverence in poetry. everything to every person.
reader claims they can a necessary skill for
uncover the reverence. successful hypothecating and
in the scripts that (buying)poetry-creation outta nothing,
life straight hands me, tell them what thy want to hear,
for collection & correction, and they’ll call you laureate,
secretarial transcribing, instead of good listener
binding, typo correction or just a keen observer-fakir
mundane are the tasks, just take what they give ya,
that’s all them muses ask, dress it like Joseph in a
don’t interfere, taken what’s given, coat of many colors,
bow, curtsy, show respect, don’t let on your plagiarism
treat its aspects/instincts correctly is all them, redressed legally
you’re just the pass through agent, true you, gotta be smart about it,
patient for no payment expected, variant spellings, swinging verbs,
be our adherent, not our truant, be discreet, they’ll call your script
we appoint don’t disappoint, a real keeper and give love or sun,
accept our patent, render legit mucho poem emojis accoladeya
as for this reverence thinge devil in a blue dress, walk the streets
if I do my job ok, on any day, grabbing snatches of overhearings,
any poem could save a life, pressed into a single tunic, you think,
if I get the commas placed, he a genius, knows my thinking,
just right, the periods period, exactly, what a great poet and
while obeying the speed limit con/hu-man par excellent
them muses so **** pleased even fool muses, too full themselves,
by this true confession released, muses who think we stink and
and self deprecation, couldn’t do it without them
they call me reverend, great pretenders by stealing
imagine them silly folk, everything in everybody and
calling a big fat liar. all thieves and cape riders,
reverend, duh, the end original liars, pants on fire
before midnight and after 3:20am April 7~8, two oh nineteen
any message you send becomes my intellectual property, fool....
Apr 8, 2019
Apr 8, 2019 at 5:24 AM UTC
Another gray trip to a small town.
At the bus stop:
an abandoned bicycle,
trembling in the rain,
waiting for someone,
who never came.
The coughing crowd,
getting on and off,
headed for the unknown.
Actors carrying
heavy bags of ugly food.
Out of the corner
of an invisible eye
snatches of words
drifting into a wrinkled world—
not the first, vivid green,
but the tired lettuce,
expired bananas—
a symbol of unreachable luxury.
Casual dialogues about angels and demons,
atheists and spiritual needs.
Random people battered by reality
rolling out a red carpet for their thoughts,
spoken aloud in the indifferent air,
small talk about kicking life—
an existential fight to survive.
The game downloaded
by an unfair fate.
Something put him, her, them
on this wrong level,
an extreme mode
the deepest discomfort.
Unfair purpose of pain.
For many,
not being loved is an aching way,
for others,
the lack of bread.
The multiple truths
closed in one small drop
of a rainy day without a name.
Jul 26, 2025
Jul 26, 2025 at 11:55 AM UTC
Today, suddenly, I reached an absurd but unerring conclusion. In a moment of enlightenment, I realized that I'm nobody, absolutely nobody. When the lightning flashed, I saw that what I had thought to be a city was in fact a deserted plain and, in the same sinister light that revealed me to myself, there seemed to be no sky above it. I was robbed of any possibility of having existed before the world. If I was ever reincarnated, I must have done so without myself, without a self to reincarnate.
I am the outskirts of some non-existent town, the long-winded prologue to an unwritten book. I'm nobody, nobody. I don't know how to feel or think or love. I'm a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I've even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breathe life into me.
I'm always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I'm falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.
And I, I myself, am the centre that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a centre that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the centre of everything surrounded by the great nothing.
And it is as if hell itself were laughing within me but, instead of the human touch of diabolical laughter, there's the mad croak of the dead universe, the circling cadaver of physical space, the end of all worlds drifting blackly in the wind, misshapen, anachronistic, without the God who created it, without God himself who spins in the dark of darks, impossible, unique, everything.
If only I could think! If only I could feel!
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 9:58 PM UTC
Hoarfrost lipstick
Touches not-dead-enough lips.
She's limp and entangled in branches.
Unfeeling fingers
Snap newly-formed buds
Breath puffing and gasping, he glances.
"Pretty...
...my pretty...my pretty cold doll!
See how the snow on her dances?
Almost...almost finished.
Just need the rest...
That last one got covered in scratches..."
Bone-numbing cuffs,
Can't scream from the gag.
She's trembling and sobbing in snatches.
"Shhhhhhhhhhh...
I just need your arms...
such pretty white limbs!.."
He picks up his shears, and advances.
Feb 22, 2011
Feb 22, 2011 at 7:34 PM UTC
I
If seasons all were summers,
And leaves would never fall,
And hopping casement-comers
Were foodless not at all,
And fragile folk might be here
That white winds bid depart;
Then one I used to see here
Would warm my wasted heart!
II
One frail, who, bravely tilling
Long hours in gripping gusts,
Was mastered by their chilling,
And now his ploughshare rusts.
So savage winter catches
The breath of limber things,
And what I love he snatches,
And what I love not, brings.
3.4k
There are bloggers and selfie-takers,
Know the difference.
There are noisemakers and peacemakers,
I can show you the evidence.
There are admirers and haters.
Be especially mindful.
There are well-wishers and supporters.
Be very careful
The are naysayers and yeasayers
Always be aware.
There are brothers and brother's keeper,
Always ready to take care.
There are destroyers and fixers,
Separate them.
There are mixers and blenders,
We need them.
There are writers and publishers,
They need each other.
There are readers and proofreader.
Both read for different reasons.
There are bystanders and onlookers.
Both will be watching.
There are movers and shakers,
One of them has the edge.
There are dreams snatches and vision busters,
Be on the lookout.
There are ghost whisperers and Ghostbusters,
Both have connection to a ghost.
There are buyers and sellers,
Each one benefits.
There are singers and there are dancers.
Everyone provides some entertainment.
©IvanBrooksPoetry
21/8/2018
Aug 21, 2018
Aug 21, 2018 at 1:59 PM UTC
Missing you,
Is the hardest thing,
That's come across my path.
First its like a dull headache,
Deep within my silly old head.
Then it moves down to my chest,
Where it burns.
My every bone, cell and fibre,
Wishes for you to be close.
Wishes to snuzzle my head into your neck.
Wishes to hear your voice.
Wishes to hold your hand.
Wishes to feel your breath on my skin.
Wishes to see your smile.
Wishes to talk for hours.
Wishes to sing to you.
Wishes to eat dinner with you.
Wishes to walk to our tree.
Wishes to hear you call be a 'nana' again.
Wishes to try and cook for you.
Wishes to do laundry with you.
Wishes to watch telly with you.
Wishes to watch you sleep.
Wishes to make you laugh about snatches.
Wishes to watch you frown when thinking.
Wishes to feel your arms slide around me.
Wishes to be at ease in your company.
The wishes just hurt.
My tears hurt.
My heart hurt.
Everything hurts.
My world isn't the same without you.
My world is poorer without you.
I stare at my arm.
My dedication to you.
It hurts.
Feeling this powerless,
Hurt.
I can't change the situation.
I can't stop time.
I can't take away your pain.
Your fears.
Your anxiety.
So I just sit here,
Watching the rain fall.
Remembering heaven.
And it hurts.
Sep 19, 2020
Sep 19, 2020 at 10:12 AM UTC
Never knew love until I gave birth
The love from a mother to a child, vice versa
How can you deny a face so sweet?
Just to think, we once shared a heartbeat
How could I just give up on you?
Never.
You're my motivation, you're presence fuels me
Colic and terrible two's...potty training and I love you's
Who could deny a face so sweet?
Seem like yesterday, April 13th...A face I couldn't wait to meet
I never want to fail you or steer you wrong
But how do I explain why your daddy's gone?
Why deny a face so sweet?
There's so much love I'm wanting to give
Teach you the necessary lessons to live
From day one I've been by your side
Held your hand through low and high tide
Am I capable of showing you "double love"
Granted, there's no limit to my love for you
But I can't love you like a father should do
He deny a face so sweet...
So special, one of a kind
Missing out on all the great times
You deserve so much more, a full time father not a boy who comes then snatches your joy
Gone.
A horrible cycle I put you in
Mommy is sorry to call him your kin
Never will I deny your face so sweet
I am your protector until the end
My love for you I'll always send...
May not be from your dad but I'll try
A face so sweet, you have my heart until I die
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 11:52 PM UTC
i'll admit it
i'm just trying to score some prozac;
something to supplement the steroids
that never seemed to ease the pain.
my body never
tolerated
anything they gave me:
all their alcohol distraction,
all their **** carelessness,
all their acid lifestyle,
none of it.
as for ecstasy,
i never got the dosage right:
i've been offered ersatz masterpieces
and turned them all down,
so they sacrificed their snatches to other gods,
who happily and hungrily partook in the
appetizing, dangerous bounty for which there is no cure.
i was once appeased for my lust
and committed love crimes,
so i learned not take ecstasy
until i tried the steroids.
i'll admit it
i'm just a pair of eyes
in a white ocean
May 3, 2011
May 3, 2011 at 1:46 PM UTC
Laying in the land of lies.
Kissing broken butterflies
Knows what she wants.
A tigress on the prowl.
Howling and squawking.
Howling and scowling.
Pawing, cat calling.
Pussycat growling.
Love laid roses on the path.
Tangled thorns and demon horns.
Thought she'd have a laugh.
Love she chooses lonely pawns.
Howling and squawking,
Howling and scowling
Pawing,cat calling.
Pussycat growling.
She snatches sweethearts.
Creating works of art.
Living on cupcakes.
Cementing works of art.
Breaking hearts and crushing bones.
Howling and squawking.
Howling and scowling.
Pawing, cat calling.
Pussycat growling.
Fingertips tips as razor blades.
Razor blades are on the ****
Love dies screaming silently.
At wicked women's will.
Said goodbye.
Howling and squawking
No more talking.
Pussycat cat cuddles.
Snuggles and kittens.
(C) LIVVI
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 5:13 AM UTC
I want summer like I want you, constantly. I’m tired of cold that snatches my breath and hope. I want the trees to regain their decency and cover their bare limbs. Wearing the greenest fullest blouses. I want the grass to grow. Thunder to roll and rain to fall. I want fat drops to bounce of the pavement, to wash my face and hair.
I want the sun to bath my skin in beauty, making it glow with warmth. I want dresses and shorts and skirts. I want brown legs and flip-flops. I want turquoise pools and florescent swimsuits.
I’m sick of cold fingers and toes. I’m tired of heaters and blankets. I want to roll down the windows. I want sweat on my back and only sheets on my bed. I’d love warm nights, drinking sweet tea, and making love beneath the stars. I wish for glowing street lights and lake nights. I want to sit in the windows of cars at sonic.
I want barbeque sunflower seeds and the fourth of July.
I want field parties with only beer and red bull, and only bonfires to see by. I want fireflies and chigger bites. Lemonade out of mason jars.
I miss cotton, and sandals. I miss volleyball, ***** feet, and ponytails. But what I miss most about summer is freedom. Those summer night driving under an endless sky of stars.
Aug 17, 2010
Aug 17, 2010 at 11:54 AM UTC
‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed,
refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and
grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the
lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns
unfriendly
And the villages ***** and charging high
prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all
night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears,
saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a
temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of
vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill
beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in
away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with
vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for
pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I
remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth,
certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had
seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different;
this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like
Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these
Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old
dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their
gods.
I should be glad of another death.
2.9k
God is in the shadows
deep in the pocket of that rose
an impossible color, beyond crimson, the epitome
of crimson, so crimson tears spring forth
This is where God, silent, drunk,
on vacation, slumbers
God is nowhere to be found
not in dead fathers
not in demented mothers
not in fading ex-lovers
not where spiders lurk
not in the boom & beat of adolescent children
It is the sorrow lodged somewhere between
breast bone and lung, sorrow the size and shape
of an island, a mountain,
the texture of wet sand
the weight of wet sand
It is this that snatches away my breath upon inhaling
A life-long sorrow, sealed to skin
as surely as metallic paint to a pan -
It hangs on with a cage fighter’s tenacity
locked in fierce embrace
sorrow coppery tasting
sorrow flaked in my hair and
Draped over the sofa, cat-like.
It just hangs around -
changing to heat, radiating at a dangerous level
nuclear, capricious, then, as time passes
just a presence one becomes accustomed to,
like an aging dog or webs above the bed
Its cousin, malevolence, its twin, melancholia
family to my family, blood to my blood –
dropping down from the shower head as I bathe
sorrow becoming holy, beyond flesh
It holds hands with the musician I’ve known all my life
and dines regularly with that other writer
We speak of transformation, you and I
of becoming other than ourselves,
as though we can unzip our flesh and find a whole
new identity underneath, throbbing, pink, blood-pumped
and with this, go forth into the same old world
that remembers transgression and forgives nothing
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 4:04 PM UTC
I sit with my face to the sun trying to catch it's warmth
But the winds quickly snatches that away
I'm quite content right here
Under the baby blue sky
Sitting in a sea of yellow flowers
They almost glow reflecting the joy of the day
But nothing breaks the chilly winds of change
The flowers scream to the sky
As the Sun's rays reach down
Like a mother for a child
The wind drags in the clouds
To blind each other's view
Mother Nature starts to cry
The flowers bowed thier heads
The sun just hides her face
For everything knew the winds of Chang where neigh
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 10:42 PM UTC
I saw her once in passing
Once only!
But once was enough
For I never stopped seeing her
She was everywhere
She was everyone
All day, all night
My heart gave her no rest
Tirelessly and aimlessly
She roamed through my mind
For days and weeks and months
Our paths never crossed again
I was grieved!
I should have made my move then
But how could I?
How do I approach such beauty?
With what would I catch her fancy?
Why should such perfection, regard me?
Would I ever see her again?
Was she gone forever?
The thoughts made me nauseous,
Made me sweat and shiver all at once.
Time passed
And she faded with it
She was gone forever.
I will never see her again
I dwell on more concrete thoughts now
As I leave the office, famished.
Entering a cafe
I spot a familiar figure by the bar
All fatigue and hunger flee-
She's the one!
I approach her,
As the DJ plays something soft
I forge on,
Fighting my greatest fear.
With a husky voice that barely made it out,
"Hello", I whisper
She turns, facing me squarely
Eyes so lovely, piercing my being.
Eternity must have passed, cos she awoke me
"Yes?" She blurted
I gawk for a moment, then I stutter,
"I, I **** at pick-up lines, but can I have this dance?"
She smiles!
Revealing perfectly crafted, white teeth (unlike mine)
Increasing my already rapid heartbeat
As she offers her left hand,
And I take it in my right
And lead her to the dance floor,
Praying for God's mercy and grace.
I awake again- from my trance
As the music fades
Determined, I stop right behind her
And as I dare to open my mouth...
A muscular dude snatches her from the side
Turning, she hugs him and they kiss.
I swallow hard!
Wanting to be him.
Unsure of what to do next, I sit by her
The bartender salutes me
"Coffee?"
"Nah" I mutter, as I stand to leave; feeling stupid.
I take one more look at her, probably my last
As she giggles lovingly
In the arms of another
Oblivious of my existence
My heart burns
As the DJ plays a familiar tune-
James Blunt's You are Beautiful
I leave the cafe
Sad as ever, as reality dawns
No use dreaming further
She's in love with another
She will never be mine
She's gone for life!
© Raphael Uzor
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
She echoes God's love,
Her blue orbs and golden hair,
Snatches away his breath.
But he could only admire,
As she was an angel,
And he a human.
Feb 27, 2016
Feb 27, 2016 at 11:02 AM UTC