"spires" poems
notice the convulsed orange inch of moon
perching on this silver minute of evening.
We’ll choose the way to the forest—no offense
to you,white town whose spires softly dare.
Will take the houseless wisping rune
of road lazily carved on sharpening air.
Fields lying miraculous in violent silence
fill with microscopic whithering
…(that’s the Black People, chérie,
who live under stones.) Don’t be afraid
and we will pass the simple ugliness
of exact tombs,where a large road crosses
and all the people are minutely dead.
Then you will slowly kiss me
51.7k
Block by block
I delve down
is it iron?
is it gold?
or only gravel and stone
toiling with pick and shovel
I dream obsidian spires
towering 190 blocks above the shore
I dream wheat fields
and cow pens
nestled amidst rolling hills
I dream discovery
mystery
exploration
but before these
there must be iron
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 11:47 AM UTC
unto thee i
burn incense
the bowl crackles
upon the gloom arise purple pencils
fluent spires of fragrance
the bowl
seethes
a flutter of stars
a turbulence of forms
delightful with indefinable flowering,
the air is
deep with desirable flowers
i think
thou lovest incense
for in the ambiguous faint aspirings
the indolent frail ascensions,
of thy smile rises the immaculate
sorrow
of thy low
hair flutter the level litanies
unto thee i burn
incense,over the dim smoke
straining my lips are vague with
ecstasy my palpitating ******* inhale the
slow
supple
flower
of thy beauty,my heart discovers thee
unto
whom i
burn
olbanum
16.6k
Blameless as daylight I stood looking
At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown,
Tails streaming against the green
Backdrop of sycamores. Sun was striking
White chapel pinnacles over the roofs,
Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves
Steadily rooted though they were all flowing
Away to the left like reeds in a sea
When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye,
Needling it dark. Then I was seeing
A melding of shapes in a hot rain:
Horses warped on the altering green,
Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns,
Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome,
Beasts of oasis, a better time.
Abrading my lid, the small grain burns:
Red cinder around which I myself,
Horses, planets and spires revolve.
Neither tears nor the easing flush
Of eyebaths can unseat the speck:
It sticks, and it has stuck a week.
I wear the present itch for flesh,
Blind to what will be and what was.
I dream that I am Oedipus.
What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind.
16.9k
We wear this city on our feet
Planting our roots with each step
Our shadows
cast shapes of ancient oak trees stretching out over old squares at daybreak
We grow here
with the spirit of buildings past,
present and rising like a staircase to heaven in the distance,
the plumes of white smoke from their rooftops as burnt offerings for incense,
spires for steeples,
the bundled masses of people moving beneath as the calloused soles
of our feet pounding the pavement,
Our congregation
seated in reverant silence on the R-Line hissing to a stop
Their hushed prayers filing out from within to bring the reclaimed sidewalks of Fayetville Street back to life to join this pilgramage
They march
downtown toward Capitol
holding signs for disarmament
They bar-hop through Glenwood toasting to deliverance
They move in a blur of faces that become us,
Rush at all hours through our veins
Cross our hearts and keep us breathing,
Moving
wearing the city on our minds
like the greyest pieces of their winter sky and the way it caps the peaks of Mount PNC, BB&T and Wells Fargo like hoodies over our heads
We assume monk-like appearances
in robes color-coded by season- from blue collar sweaters to cold hard sweat
We'll wear their city until we're worn out and wet,
We'll wear their dreams at night
like streetlamps flickering on beneath wired telephone poles carrying conversations about each one as far south as Florida, fears unspoken, made visible
on iron park benches too cold to sit on at this hour
We'll keep walking
and wear this city like backpacks over our shoulders
under the watch of their heavens,
the skyline
a glowing testament
of every step taken
toward someplace higher.
Apr 9, 2018
Apr 9, 2018 at 7:27 PM UTC
flex and perspire my darling
would you mind a small suffering for craven kisses
to have your dark fig **** and drenching *****
stroked with a tickling finger lingering
and strong hands around your sweetly curved throat
that shunt the breath
to yield willingly for sharp-toothed nibbles with surprise tongue whipping?
will you present your soft belly and cupping *******
for dark cruelties that excite beyond tabulation
will you present yourself with smiles
and goddess leg show
sobbing for feral pink spires gleaming
while quivering thighs
turn hot red from the slap of the leather strap splitting stings?
will tears of love
mix in wild berry utterance
and flashing spitfire’s tongue?
are you made for this?
your every whimper an invitation
like an open pink gate
do you need the saint of dark desires to rescue you
from banal dim-witted all american in and out?
do you need to drown in oceanic wave tsunamis
of hot butter **** glitter, blood flooding gasms
and tender aftercare?
my wish
that you shimmer like silver
possessed
by the saint of sadism
popes of eros
who fill you with the milk of the moon
all stars that melt you into the depths of paradise
and that this dark ecstasy
is the only suffering you will ever know.
Jul 29, 2018
Jul 29, 2018 at 6:27 AM UTC
stinging
gold swarms
upon the spires
silver
chants the litanies the
great bells are ringing with rose
the lewd fat bells
and a tall
wind
is dragging
the
sea
with
dream
-S
13k
The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
And the harpies of upper air,
That flutter and laugh and stare.
For the village dead to the moon outspread
Never shone in the sunset's gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
Where the rivers of madness stream
Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.
A chill wind blows through the rows of sheaves
In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
For harvests that fly and fail.
Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
That tore from the past its own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral power
Spreads sleep o'er the cosmic throne,
And looses the vast unknown.
So here again stretch the vale and plain
That moons long-forgotten saw,
And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,
Sprung out of the tomb's black maw
To shake all the world with awe.
And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,
The ugliness and the pest
Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,
Shall some day be with the rest,
And brood with the shades unblest.
Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,
And the leprous spires ascend;
For new and old alike in the fold
Of horror and death are penned,
For the hounds of Time to rend.
12k
Oh Language, where hast thou hid thyself?
Thy once-bright spires decline to dust.
The calm, well-reasoned flow of wisdom
a bygone memory. I’ll not trust
these tween-to-twenty-something’s prattle;
endless babble of self-absorption
centered in pleasure-maximizing:
narcissistic thought-abortion.
Dude—they’re SO not app’ed for language
used by dad ten years ago.
I’m totally DONE with their, like, verbiage
They’re all: Smartphone Teenage Show.
It’s just, like, TALKING—without words
in language ghettos; texting proud . . .
Their lack of precision offends my brain—
They ought to be ashamed (out loud).
Vygotsky’s vaunted Z.P.D,
and Bakhtin’s heteroglossic crack
along with Roland Barthe’s pet parrot
Are SO like totally talking smack.
Oct 4, 2015
Oct 4, 2015 at 3:00 PM UTC
Babylon has fallen! Aye; but Babylon endures
Wherever human wisdom shines or human folly lures;
Where lovers lingering walk beside, and happy children play,
Is Babylon! Babylon! for ever and for aye.
The plan is rudely fashioned, the dream is unfulfilled,
Yet all is in the archetype if but a builder willed;
And Babylon is calling us, the microcosm of men,
To range her walls in harmony and lift her spires again;
The sternest walls, the proudest spires, that ever sun shone on,
Halting a space his burning race to gaze on Babylon.
Babylon has fallen! Aye; but Babylon shall stand:
The mantle of her majesty is over sea and land.
Hers is the name of challenge flung, a watchword in the fight
To grapple grim eternities and gain the old delight;
And in the word the dream is hid, and in the dream the deed,
And in the deed the mastery for those who dare to lead.
Surely her day shall come again, surely her breed be born
To urge the hope of humankind and scale the peaks of morn --
To fight as they who fought till death their ****** field upon,
And kept the gate against the Fate frowning on Babylon.
11k
Four old friends
Dead of winter small town
Germany.
Smoke rising from chimneys
From cigarettes, and pipes
From trains riding the rural rails
From city spires
And factories
From airplanes
Airplanes
and Airplanes,
From Airplanes.
Smoke dancing and laughing
Stinging and coughing
Smoke in my hair and jacket
In the pores of my skin
Smoke in my eyes,
Up the hill
And through the woods
Dead of winter
Small town Germany
Four old friends
Walk two by two
Three by one
Four and four.
Walk by the church,
Down the creek,
Up the hills, the hills
And through the woods
Small town
Germany four old friends
Dead of winter
Cigar smoke and beer
Cigarillos in a chain
Smoke from crystalizing breath
And fireworks
Smoke from bonfires
And tailpipes
Smoke from airplanes
Airplanes and airplanes
Smoke from airplanes.
Smoke stains and cigarette burns
Little circles in my jacket
Germany
Four old friends dead of winter
Small town
Smoke tears
Smoke promises
Smoke memories that linger
Like the faint nausea
Of what-the-hell-has-happened.
I watch the **** end of your last cigarette
Crumpled and fading
In the ashtray of that Badischer bar
And your eyebrow twitched
The heart-wrenching shiver
Of what-the-hell-has-happened.
And I whispered:
(airplanes)
airplanes and airplanes
I whispered airplanes.
That’s what the hell.
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 12:06 PM UTC
A late lark twitters from the quiet skies;
And from the west,
Where the sun, his day's work ended,
Lingers as in content,
There falls on the old, grey city
An influence luminous and serene,
A shining peace.
The smoke ascends
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires
Shine, and are changed. In the valley
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,
Closing his benediction,
Sinks, and the darkening air
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night--
Night with her train of stars
And her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing!
My task accomplished and the long day done,
My wages taken, and in my heart
Some late lark singing,
Let me be gathered to the quiet west,
The sundown splendid and serene,
Death.
10.1k
Crawl to me on all fours, and fix me with those eyes.
Gleaming ivory in the pale darkness.
Suitored to alien mires, foreign environments of crawling dust and spires of simplistic grace.
That we move into.
That we move into as finger pads touch skin and lips and wet tongue tips that grace the very edge of taste itself.
The sonata of flesh has begun as we begin this symbiotic ballet that signifies the end, the start, but not the middle of our burning tryst.
which burns brightly in summer night heat, washing down the walls separating me from you and you from yourself.
Fix me with those eyes once more,
tilt the timer; make the moments slow
And the gas lit beam dance and grow
to our scaly sonata of flesh.
Played without violin
or cello
or trumpet noise
or flute.
But with arms,
and lips
and hair
and bust
and drums.
There are always drums; beating on through the night,
beating their primal rhythm as you crawl towards me,
on all fours, in that oroborus of lust;
symbiotic with itself,
reflecting off itself;
encased in itself.
Crawl to me on all fours
Crawl to me -
And taste of my being.
Nov 10, 2011
Nov 10, 2011 at 10:46 PM UTC
Let me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
How fast the flitting figures come!
The mild, the fierce, the stony face;
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.
They pass--to toil, to strife, to rest;
To halls in which the feast is spread;
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the dead.
And some to happy homes repair,
Where children, pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.
And some, who walk in calmness here,
Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
Youth, with pale cheek and slender frame,
And dreams of greatness in thine eye!
Goest thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?
Keen son of trade, with eager brow!
Who is now fluttering in thy snare?
Thy golden fortunes, tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires in air?
Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
The dance till daylight gleam again?
Who sorrow o'er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
Some, famine-struck, shall think how long
The cold dark hours, how slow the light,
And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
Shall hide in dens of shame to-night.
Each, where his tasks or pleasures call,
They pass, and heed each other not.
There is who heeds, who holds them all,
In his large love and boundless thought.
These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.
7.8k
Sickly might,
cravens and craving demon drooling bite.
That fleshly flaunt of fool and privilege,
he burned to smoldering.
Lapped his blood from crowned jewel
and corroded golden spires.
The lost cadaver,
pride driven manicured demon of self
driven greed and godly hunger.
Such as fiendish that ******
the sulfured serpent,
tis a sickened beast in dread black suit,
raffled in silken red tie
it's but the psychopath's blood smeared human hide.
Crave the flesh,
tear and splatter the soul from within,
fiends of fantastically practiced to perfect parallel smiles.
They'll slip your soul from the bars of your throat,
reap every inch of the body's hold.
Steal friendships to lips,
lives to hips,
slurp the killing,
seize the blind weeping cold.
You've got nothing not to be swept and stole.
Soulless has a studded luster,
but the ****** socio bleeds liquid sins,
bears fangs plastic wrapped in blades,
human game is the psychopath's wet dream.
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 28, 2011 at 12:27 AM UTC
Alone the third thing can't be known.
Alone, I am a cold, dark stone
In a universe yawning lusterless,
Spinning void of aim.
Then light shines
In eyes and skies
Of gray and blue
And I am a new daymoon.
Night leads the day
As day ushers night;
Light follows darkness
As darkness the light.
I follow, you pull;
Take my arm, check my stride.
You and I mark time and tide.
We meet.
We pass.
We kiss.
Eclipse.
Heart quivers and the heavens shift.
"Let us go then, you and I,"
Wend our way across the sky.
The unknown beckons
To me and you
Where green meets hues
Of gray and blue.
Infinite line: horizons new.
Misty islands ships drift past,
Clouds cut by spires of stone, steel and glass,
Cities bright in alley pools,
Magic light on windswept moors.
Prairie hills in gentle rain,
Northwood pines sun washed again,
Spring moss upon the forest floor,
A different green on the unopened door.
"Let us go then, you and I,"
Together take the road untried;
Wend our way across the sky:
A little sphere of green and blue
'Round which we dance,
Me and you.
Feb 14, 2019
Feb 14, 2019 at 10:47 PM UTC
Dear diabolic debutante / Spawn of the unfathomable abyss of blackness / Daughter of dreadful dead desire / Black-shrouded sinister sister of celestial gloom before whose imperious gaze the heavens fall silent / Whip-lash girl-child of the graves whose pallid visage kindles the myriad infernal fires / Autocratic vampiress of lunar doom whose winding-cloth enfolds the thousand horrors of blood-drenched nightmare / Thou that wanderest the cypress-crested hills of funereal necropolises / Whose icy glance cracks the ungraven tombstones of utter desolation / Empress of night and madness / Who stalks the locked and shadowed hallways of unhallowed thought / Whose burial-boat glides the still waters over Lethe’s silent depths to the unglimpsed isle of eternal mourning / Whose parapets tower above the fiefdoms of quotidian banality / Whose flying buttresses overlook the Stygian waters of the forgotten drowned denizens of damnation / Whose unshackled dungeons open to worlds of regal splendor / Whose spires pierce dark skies where oblivion buries the ruined cities of revelry under the drifting clouds of leaden time / Oh maiden of melancholic alchemy whose petrified passions transmute base metal into pure gold…
May the gibbous moon of equinox shine its baleful eye upon you; may you tread in sacramental calm the winding starlit paths of somnolent cemeteries; may my unmixed metaphors unveil in delirium their parabolic mysteries before the smoldering altar of your uninterpretable allegory; may the favor of your scorn forever lay me out, embalmed, undead, on the cold stone of merciless reality. Behold: in cryptic script of spectral apparition, in tracery of coded illumination, amidst the dawning rays of torment I write thine unknown name on the threshold of daylight. And from within the mortared wall of self I speak forth from my sepulcher the Sibylline utterance,
unsought, unheard, undreamt:
JUST WANTED TO SAY ‘HI’ !
☻
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 9:15 PM UTC
hooray say the roses, today is blamesday
and we are red as blood.
hooray say the roses, today is Wednesday
and we bloom wher soldiers fell
and lovers too,
and the snake at the word.
hooray say the roses, darkness comes
all at once, like lights gone out,
the sun leaves dark continents
and rows of stone.
hooray say the roses, cannons and spires,
birds, bees, bombers, today is Friday
the hand holding a medal out the window,
a moth going by, half a mile an hour,
hooray hooray
hooray say the roses
we have empires on our stems,
the sun moves the mouth:
hooray hooray hooray
and that is why you like us.
6.4k
*rocks don't care
all stubble and stones
a difficult geometry
so if they don't fit
they are hammered
and
crushed to rubble
jammed together to make virile walls
and if stabbed with swords
care not about
torn bellies and broken necks
soaking them crimson rust
or drowned nautilus
beneath the sea
humans
have futility in common with rocks
except that everything
girds and gnaws
at their belligerent sensitivity
all clouded soft towers
bi-pedal mortal spires
with tender flesh
beaten into place
lacerated
truncated amputees
to fit the outer life
of status and statues
a scandal to the inner coves of self
I'm envious of rocks
except for moments of
shifting watery kisses
clamorous for love
we remain
disfigured terrains
hunters of souls balmy unguents
while
fluctious immolating moons
unravel
in a hidden grieving
oh countenance of apathy
only to be more like you
a wilderness of stumps
and
dead rock gods
and our aspiration
indifference
our exit
the path of the renunciate
a penitence
feasting only on futility
and the vagaries of spirit*
Nov 21, 2017
Nov 21, 2017 at 2:36 PM UTC
Genocide
Flying, eight tall, beautiful spires ascend towards the sky
onto a thin silk wire of silver and white.
Lovely it rises so high.
Why must we **** the spider to save the butterfly?
to keep that sacred silence?
to savor your favored violence?
never far...
The floating bird touches the golden beach.
A medicine man welcomes them with open arms,
but from the belly of the beast comes a leech
with butterfly wings
Feb 12, 2010
Feb 12, 2010 at 8:39 PM UTC
Born to the night in the cry of wolves,
We are….inked lovers spilling secrets, under velvet skies,
Shrouding the night in silver spools;
The season of silver silence, hangs upon shades of silken soul,
This midnight offering, a white entice;
My hair shimmers brightly, a wet fleece of gold, of shadow and starlight,
And shimmering hues, emerald and sapphire breathe kindred embers into the bellows of passion;
Challenging the flame that burns; entwined....
Whispered intrigue lays in the crescent of moon,
In an eminent blaze of sweetest surrender
Unborn whispers lie entwined with heated petals, silken;
We shiver....I shiver,
I am warm arms embraced;
Your lips hard yet soft against my side,
The feel of flesh warmed to a rising flame...
The long moon steps into midnight;
My ******* full of your hands as candles, pour hard against the ebon fall,
Luscious to the hush of soft smiles
Steeled eloquence flows in ribbon ripples;
Winter sown, blood quilled, in midnights cast;
Cloaked in beautiful, shadow's bed a bouquet of lacy foxglove...
Eyes closed and deep of breath,
Moistness seeps the sugared flower, and longing surges deep;
Shudder me wicked, drench me quick;
The wildness swirls inside as he moves like a shadow over my heart
His tongue eager to swim the gushing urge;
Touching, slick-slide, the soothe of smooth fingers slip past softness;
Lips cross, moist to moan me quick, sliding to quivers.
Thigh's whispering and heart pounding ,
Soft, the wind blows, tapping walls, fingers dancing
And shadow sways to moonlight...
Velvet-soft, the sweet of tongue's mesh,
Fire burning,
The tips of breast's aroused by the touch of a slow hand lover;
Your tongue gently rolls, wet and burning hot,
Hungrily, it feeds diving deep, and sandalwood spires upon the malachite air,
And burning murmurs the silent song, pleasures
Your flame to touch me hot, softly hard,
Against the darting quivering rose, stokes sweet, the flame of conjure....
I weep as you strain to slay this huntress of indolent submission;
Descending into darkness, I squirm upon your touch, lifting my altar upon your hunger,
Eyes lost to ecstasy, the flow quickens from abyssal moans;
Overflowing with need, release bound by gold shattered stars
Suckling whispered thoughts;
With us, for us, in us, in dreams, in thoughts, in love
....And in....time my love..................
Aug 8, 2012
Aug 8, 2012 at 5:31 PM UTC
~
the
skies breath
aloud their sighs
as county-sized clouds
tower o'er the countryside
severed by the mountain's scythe
remnants scattered now like little spies
no hope of rebound to their former glory
only obliterated slices now the sun can’t hide
clouds reduced to skyscraper size must now suffice
and on it goes, cumulus fingers sliced by lofty granite spires.
~
*post script.
just a playful mix
of mindless alliteration
with a bit of concrete.*
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 2:32 AM UTC
a future promise
a hard on like bundled gym socks
in stuffed blue jeans
a future threat
a shriveled phallus wrinkled obsolete
she remembered fondly
being beaten drum chatter
and seized like slow roasted
fall off the bone pulled pork
****** raggedy Ann
catapulted beyond Euboean heavens
ravaging scrotums Gordian ******
with her wild fiendish mouth
drinking a river of
haloed golden showers
spit and ****
in a runaway hot house of glistening pink
buttery spires
engorging her macerated orifices
half eaten radish
chocking on hordes
of big do do *****
a ****** face; cross eyed
Babylon abalone
bashed Ashly mashed
begging for
a face full of swinging *****
like caped chandeliers
trotting faint giggles
in a constellation
of ruptured arteries
and thick sparked ****
on her knees
milk glitter faced
scared with happiness
she counted one smiling bruise at a time
her badge of calamities
black and blue silhouettes
grinning invitations like party favors
without a crease of shame
her skin rapturous
spackled patchworks
bled like torrential fountains summer tide
while every body had fizzy red ice phlebotomies
and steamed through her drooling tumble pie
lust ***** totem
house of winding labyrinths
honey pumped transfusion
flush on blush
opera of tangled limbs
red pulse wedding flowers
slick ***** palace
blood tongued orchard
caressing knotted mooned
**** spill
Jan 14, 2019
Jan 14, 2019 at 2:22 PM UTC
We’re hand in hand and walking, down where the Camden canal runs away from us
and breaks faintly in spires, under the floating patches of, olive tree, street lamps.
She shivers on her cigarette, smoke watching, a furnace strong and foreign,
like the ******* of the incense in Rome, tracing flaming *** trails.
The bird living in my ribcage beats it’s great and terrible wings
again, and has another. I have her cold elbow fit my palm.
The pigeons obliviously sleep to the draw
of that burning London moon.
The draw I feel moving me.
down into the world
that acts as a cellar
to the one we know.
So much colder
than the heat
is, in her
~
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 11:14 AM UTC