"spokes" poems
Sweet and savory tides
Fill the self-perpetuating void
Spinning spokes of inspiration
Distillate of jungle and earth
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 2:59 AM UTC
I want
to put a card in the spokes of my bike
and ride
until the sound drives me crazier
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 1:10 AM UTC
*Being alone doesn't hurt me
neither does loneliness.
What really hurts is
realising that
I should be
with you
right
now
yet
we are
trapped
in the spokes
of this absurdity,
and karma just seems
happy to see us worlds
apart, dying of nostalgia
What hurts is missing you.*
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 6:18 PM UTC
I’m not broken
I’m a puzzle not to be solved
I’m a bird of…
Preying on rain…
But the clouds elude my webs
I’m the underside of an antisocial umbrella
What with the moisture-averse lovers nowadays
I shoo them off and twist my spokes
And finally I’m no longer pretending completeness for the sake of my surroundings
Because She comes clad timeless
Comes with the thunder
And She tastes like all or nothing
Oct 11, 2018
Oct 11, 2018 at 3:14 PM UTC
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a ***
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.
__
"Lao Tzu is believed to have been a Chinese philosopher (a person who seeks to answer questions about humans and their place in the universe) and the accepted author of the Tao te ching, the main text of Taoist thought. He is considered the father of Chinese Taoism (a philosophy that advocates living a simple life).
Read more: Lao Tzu Biography - life, name, death, school, book, old, information, born, time http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ki-Lo/Lao-Tzu.html
Oct 26, 2010
Oct 26, 2010 at 2:38 AM UTC
Turquoise blues guitars
Laughing baby elephants (that paint)
Melodies singing lullabies to sleepy baby elephants
(tired from painting all day)
Blank canvases full of blackberries on the inside
The antidote to love
All the dotes that didn't get doted
And all the ones that did
Playing badminton in the backyard of Cupid's summer home in Manarola
The ruby that died to make Dorothy's slippers
And the shortest hair from the Lion's tail
Wine filled grapes
Water balloons filled from hot springs and melted mountain snow
Two spokes from Steve McQueen's "Great Escape" motorcycle
Three kisses from Ilsa Lund
And a smile from Sabrina Fairchild
Tom Robbins' typewriter (it's magic)
A flying dragon
A dragonfly (grounded for not doing her homework)
Jenny's phone number
The pillow that hit the floor at Cecilia's that afternoon
The third stair from the top of the Stairway to Heaven (best view)
One of the lost souls swimming in a fish bowl
And a grain of salt from the sea the other is swimming in
An olympic size pool full of melted crayons
A vile of sweat from the ever fleeing muse
A refrigerator the size of Rhode Island
Full of magnificent lines of magnetic poetry
Poetry (all of it)
The monster under the monster's bed
Every foul ball ever caught by any kid
Hammocks (any and every)
The cardboard boat that never stopped sailing down the gutter of the world
The secret to everything
(kept securely under the bed of the monster, under the monster's bed)
Santa's real address (you won't believe this)
The blue ink from the blueprints of Atlantis
Golf carts with no maximum speed
The energy dust left from dancing, hugging and smiling
Freshly climbed trees
A warehouse the size of Antarctica completely filled
Wall to wall with raw, unfiltered laughter
Beer
Everything that was left on the field
Passionate embraces and embracing a passion
Apology free, but full of forgiveness
The wild of the wilderness
The tame of the un-tame
Language
Intuition
Conception
First kisses, waves and winks
Goodbye hugs and thrown in kitchen sinks
Art
Music
Pain
Puddles that have been danced in under pouring rain
Empty film cans
Films on screens
All of these ingredients
Are what makes up
Dreams
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 2:20 PM UTC
This is a portrait of abandoment:
rusty spokes, faulty breaks, and negligent owners.
(I'm still lying on the sidewalk too, waiting for a reason to shift gears.)
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 10:21 PM UTC
Cigarette smoke
Wheels no spokes
Board rollin down alleys
Late night skate
Let me escape
The life I never planned
Never on time
You best lower your expectations
Snortin molly in the bathroom
Chuggin ***** in the hall
I could be anywhere at all
But I’d still crawl
back to the clutches of dependence
I forfeited life's race in the first lap
Yet I'm still trapped
Coughing up blood
I strive for nothing
I don't want to feel
I long to be free
From society
Our culture has maxed out
So now everyone wants to shout
for help because what the world wants
Is unrealistic
We try to overdose
And become comatose
To drop all worries of material success
Those
Stacks on stacks on stacks
Racks on racks on racks
We forget
its just paper
Not what defines us
The rest is up to the people
To rise about the atmosphere
Of atoms and mold supportive molecules from the elements we're presented
Not corrected like a sent typo
To your mom
Or boss
Control
Is unattainable
Fathom the slack of a slacker
Loosen your ropes
And walk the plank
With no hopes of disaster nor triumph
Determined
To just be
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 5:31 AM UTC
The air is a mill of hooks --
Questions without answer,
Glittering and drunk as flies
Whose kiss stings unbearably
In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.
I remember
The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,
The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets.
Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
Once one has been seized up
Without a part left over,
Not a toe, not a finger, and used,
Used utterly, in the sun's conflagration, the stains
That lengthen from ancient cathedrals
What is the remedy?
The pill of the Communion tablet,
The walking beside still water? Memory?
Or picking up the bright pieces
Of Christ in the faces of rodents,
The tame flower-nibblers, the ones
Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable --
The humpback in his small, washed cottage
Under the spokes of the clematis.
Is there no great love, only tenderness?
Does the sea
Remember the walker upon it?
Meaning leaks from the molecules.
The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats,
The children leap in their cots.
The sun blooms, it is a geranium.
The heart has not stopped.
5.2k
Mama told me to stay in school
But, I couldn't take those teacher's rules
Papa said "Son, won't you listen real quick.
School was a drag, so I quit."
I got the homework blues
Baby, they're mean
I got the homework blues
Well, I had to drop out of school
When I got them blues
Couldn't get a job, so I got a career
Driving a truck and drinking a beer
I've seen the country from coast to coast
Never got a flat but, I broke some spokes
I got the homework blues
Baby, they're mean
I got the homework blues
Well, I had to drop out of school
When I got dem blues
Got a wife, got a kid
The kid goes to school
but, he wants to quit
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 11:45 AM UTC
Psychedelic spokes
Spinning out from
An undetermined center
Periwinkle powdered
Spines that invite
Me to feel
Making a point
At my prying fingertips
From smooth to prickly
Quaint you are
When your fragrance
Murmurs a tone of earth
A lotus of the desert
Silently beaming through
A plump body
An infant
With little
Needs
©Copyright 2014 Written and Edited by Racquel Davis
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 11:26 AM UTC
See the Rabbi. See him tormented by choice. See his people. See them wracked by hate. See the others. See their anger radiate outward in glowing spokes, exploding firebrand in a tinder city.
On a night like any other, the moon at sixth house, fulcrum of pinwheel zodiac, the Rabbi, awash in lidless starlight, rises somber and makes his choice. And when the sun is furthermost, he and three of his others gather at the murmuring riverbank where the brown clay is most pliable and begin to dig, sifting rock and root from trundled earth. Hours spent exhuming the clay, molding it, kneading its muscles, tracing its veins, baking its skin in the starlight. More hours spent in whispering prayer, the words bent and somersaulting over themselves like tumbling books.
See Truth drawn on its forehead, life etched from clay and word. As the sun rises, so it does, wavering at first, but steadier, lapping at the river, and their faces move slowly across the water. See the Rabbi speak to it, his words winding its mechanism. See it stride past the ghetto, wade through the market, and into the borough, siege unto its own.
See the others scream for mercy from the kiln of its stare, from their flaming tenements, their crumpling rooftops.
See it wade back through the market, past the ghetto, back to the riverbank to kneel in the underbrush. See it tilt its head to the lilt of a stranded daisy caught in a vagrant gust. See it caught, too, and see it see. It sees the colors of Eden in the ferns. It hears the river churning sediment, fossils, gravel, whirling over driftwood. It touches moss on a rock; gently rotates its hand to let a grub complete an oblivious circumference. See it sit in silence.
See the Rabbi meet with the others, then his others. And on a day like any other, when the sun is at its apogee, they slip down the riverbank where it still sits, still. It ignores their autonomous logic, their homunculus rationale. They are perversions of variety cloaked in righteous intention. So it remains.
See the Rabbi and his others gather at the murmuring riverbank, shadow conclave in shifting sunlight, then rise somber and decided. They pin it to the earth as the Rabbi chants, invoking the void in which forbidden knowledge spirals. It squirms under the power of the Word, mind-forged manacle as incantation. See the Rabbi draw to a close. His hand is arbiter, swooping down to smudge Truth from its forehead. What is left but Death.
See its hand crumble in its passage as it reaches for the stranded daisy. See the colors of Eden darken in its eyes, its own body the dust that denies it light. See it collapse into itself, the clay that was once animate spilling onto the riverbank. See the Rabbi and his others shimmer then fade into city grey.
The daisy stands still.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM UTC
498
I envy Seas, whereon He rides—
I envy Spokes of Wheels
Of Chariots, that Him convey—
I envy Crooked Hills
That gaze upon His journey—
How easy All can see
What is forbidden utterly
As Heaven—unto me!
I envy Nests of Sparrows—
That dot His distant Eaves—
The wealthy Fly, upon His Pane—
The happy—happy Leaves—
That just abroad His Window
Have Summer’s leave to play—
The Ear Rings of Pizarro
Could not obtain for me—
I envy Light—that wakes Him—
And Bells—that boldly ring
To tell Him it is Noon, abroad—
Myself—be Noon to Him—
Yet interdict—my Blossom—
And abrogate—my Bee—
Lest Noon in Everlasting Night—
Drop Gabriel—and Me—
4k
No age limit.
Freedom.
Strength.
GREEN!
Don't care if it's a hipster fad.
I Loved you far before the world.
Simplicity of my legs.
Yet so much power behind these things.
You make me throw my OCD needing to rhyme and flow completely out the window.
Well... Sort of.
And yeah, it bugs me that I'm now writing in complete sentences, but I don't even care anymore.
I care about my bike.
And the beauty that it brings to the world.
May 10, 2012
May 10, 2012 at 12:49 PM UTC
The 'wheel of Dharma' with eight spokes leads from the front,
I bow to the Buddha's 'eightfold path' and walk forward,
My love, the octopus, my 'dharma consort'; I didn't choose her myself,
her eight hands passionately sought me and found ,
I surrendered to the possibility of abundant caresses.
Her eight lithe hands, touch and tangle me, sloshing her love.
A journey man I am, a humble seeker too, walking sun splashed paths,
equally in love with dusky night and moon beams tender.
When I am in pain and distress, any one's fate in this planet,
she transforms to love eightfold and more, scented breeze at my bedside.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 2:34 PM UTC
Sun-filled mornings burn bright
Warm smells of life dashing by
Squint eyed despair peeking out of the dark
Bright memories gone degraded by time
Broken life shuffles slowly by
Rings click on the spokes of a chair
Wheels turning slowly around
Bumps on the door jamb from failing sight
Lost mornings sunny dipped in light
Burns on the minds sticking to life
Soft darkness covering slow moving despair
Bright days dissolving into lost nights
Squint eyed despair and fumbling thoughts
Slow moving wheels and dangling legs
cc1210
Dec 30, 2010
Dec 30, 2010 at 9:52 PM UTC
I wish the world
banana seats and ***** bars
chariots of childhood
transports to imaginary kingdoms
erasers of boundaries
freedom makers
brother bonders
vehicles of the delegates of peace
a better way.
Bolted to a heavy metal frame of
metallic green with
ape hanger handlebars
the playing cards clothes-pinned in spokes
making siren noises with our mouths
rope-lashed weapons aboard
discovering creeks
woods
forbidden backyards and
never-before-known games with
barn side lumber and pop cans
double-dog daring inedible things
teasing girls
riding to secret clubhouse meetings and
the playground.
I wish the world
our playground
summers of innocence
bottomless wells of laughter
center of the universe
June to September
ages 8 to 18
bean bags and ringers
tether ball - hand and paddle
basketball and baseball and
box hockey
(where it was encouraged
to give children axe handles and
a softball
to beat through holes
in a 2 x 6 board
defending a goal
with their life and
busted knuckles).
We liked it that way.
We lived as legends.
I wish the world
a bike ride with friends
ending at the playground.
For there has never been a bad day
on a banana seat.
Jan 5, 2014
Jan 5, 2014 at 2:51 PM UTC
A speech in a play once described
A Queen of Dreams.
Mab.
The faerie's midwife.
I fear that she may be real.
Plaguing me with dreams that haunt my reality.
Déjà Vu Being nearly
The only feeling I live with.
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 2:05 PM UTC
In the early evening, a now, as man is bending
over his writing table.
Slowly he lifts his head; a woman
appears, carrying roses.
Her face floats to the surface of the mirror,
marked with the green spokes of rose stems.
It is a form
of suffering: then always the transparent page
raised to the window until its veins emerge
as words finally filled with ink.
And I am meant to understand
what binds them together
or to the gray house held firmly in place by dusk
because I must enter their lives:
it is spring, the pear tree
filming with weak, white blossoms.
3.8k
MANY ways to spell good night.
Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue and then go out.
Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.
Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to a razorback hill.
It is easy to spell good night.
Many ways to spell good night.
3.5k
My words have just been ramblin',
I left the rhyming state of mind.
The ace of spades is gamblin',
but the rabbit's now on time.
Elevator going down,
catching buses to the sound.
How do I know that I am late?
Time exists in spite of fate.
We're racing, now, against the clock
in circles, 'round the spokes.
I've forgotten how the ticking tocks,
for the gears have been long broke.
Darlin', won't you take my hand?
They're try'na pull you under and
together we can leave this land,
but you must know just where you stand.
-
This shortcut leads to trouble,
but you'll get there on the double.
Bad ideas, I've had a couple;
my shattered thoughts within the rubble.
Broken fragments of my mind,
my fate's aligning just in time.
To the past, I'm disinclined;
looking down an uphill climb.
-
You're sending me a message
about the faithfulness of love;
the white rabbit left me breathless,
I still don't know what you speak of.
"I chose you, please choose me, too?"
I'm running, but I don't know what to.
I've fallen down the rabbit's hole,
into a world without console.
Oct 16, 2014
Oct 16, 2014 at 6:02 PM UTC
"Cash, Grass or Ass-No One Rides Free!"
reads the bumper-sticker slapped on the ratty Harley.
Its black leather seat is cracked, tattered and torn,
the headlight is busted and there's no friggin' horn;
with mismatched saddlebags strapped to each side,
the panhead leaks like a sieve, but it's still quite a ride.
The gas-tank is dented, scratched and coated with muck,
the chrome no longer shines, but who gives a flyin' ****
Its tires are bald, the spokes are all rusted to ****
and the frame is off-kilter from a cage-driver's hit.
The biker just puffed the last hit from his pipe,
slammed down the rest of the J.D. from the bash last night;
then he hops on his hog, kicks the monster to start,
the muffler-pipes blast flames and roar like a ****
Together they roll down the road like old pals,'
with nowhere to go, just obnoxious and loud:
the tombstone tail-light flashes bright red on this mess,
'though Cashless, Grassless and Assless, they couldn't care less!
Sep 2, 2010
Sep 2, 2010 at 1:34 AM UTC
So gradual in those summers was the going
of the age it seemed that the long days setting out
when the stars faded over the mountains were not
leaving us even as the birds woke in full song and the dew
glittered in the webs it appeared then that the clear morning
opening into the sky was something of ours
to have and keep and that the brightness we could not touch
and the air we could not hold had come to be there all the time
for us and would never be gone and that the axle
we did not hear was not turning when the ancient car
coughed in the roofer's barn and rolled out echoing
first thing into the lane and the only tractor
in the village rumbled and went into its rusty
mutterings before heading out of its lean-to
into the cow pats and the shadow of the lime tree
we did not see that the swallows flashing and the sparks
of their cries were fast in the spokes of the hollow
wheel that was turning and turning us taking us
all away as one with the tires of the baker's van
where the wheels of bread were stacked like days in calendars
coming and going all at once we did not hear
the rim of the hour in whatever we were saying
or touching all day we thought it was there and would stay
it was only as the afternoon lengthened on its
dial and the shadows reached out farther and farther
from everything that we began to listen for what
might be escaping us and we heard high voices ringing
the village at sundown calling their animals home
and then the bats after dark and the silence on its road
2.9k
shapeshifter, son drunk
& changing skins.
he digs up skeletons of a spanish battalion
buried
by tigers on the garden key.
suncresent
spray of blood & oranges.
new-fangled sailors once soaked
in madness.
now just starvation.
the viking speaks:
in limericks of new world poise.
his antler woven mask,
set nicely upon the shore.
seod, turtle lord
of space & time, appears only once
every lunar eclipse. bound by treatise
to the jellyfish triumvirate.
his acolyte,
bolivar t. shagnasty,
wanders the mainland in search of water
or meat of trees.
kindness
of men turns to dust & belly worms.
forgotten, the plants mutate
into root-rich empires
of fish & figurine.
million year armistice.
dr. samuel mudd,
shackled years to tide-slab &
fort jefferson. he
purifies the island of its yellow
shivering death.
hospital key.
fastforward hundred plus years
through mudd lifeline:
battle weary sneakers,
spokes sung by strum of card, the bmx
stridden boy & his
teenage mutant ninja turtle mask.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC