"steppes" poems
There are some who may prefer a cloudless sky and the touch of a warm sun. These hearts are similar climates, and you may find them at no great distance from the equator.
Not mine.
My love is for the sedge and moss covered upland of frozen lakes, where the cold white blanket covers the steppes. Peace is found here, among the ice and whispered within the biting gale as it travels over her skin.
Her chill breath touches me, and I am not driven away.
For within my chest beats a fire as black as space between the stars.
And I go unclothed, as the caribou carry me across the frozen land.
I am the horned god.
Sep 14, 2016
Sep 14, 2016 at 2:01 AM UTC
Lights dim,
Colour explodes,
For upon the stage there is magic
and in the orchestra pit there is music,
Young dancers robed in elegance
glide across the richly decorated stage,
And the night smiles by
with selection after selection
of sublime ballet confection,
The dancers dazzle and daze,
Their bodies hugging the music's enchanting embrace,
Upon their faces are the smiles of summer and golden radiance,
On their bare backs ripple muscles glowing with the sheen of sweat and glory,
Their breath comes in quick bursts as they fly through the air
and land as gently as a feather on the breath of a nightingale,
The girls are as bright as dawn's first light
and the men so supple and full of ecstatic zest,
These gifted artists were not from the snow-capped streets
of St. Petersburg
or from the steppes of the Bolshoi
nor were they from the giddy heights of the opera at Notre Dame de Paris
nor were they plucked from Covent Garden's glorious school of Royal Ballet,
No, it was none of those rigid and regimented corps de ballet,
For the vibrant and energetic dancers that mesmerised the audience
were living the pure joy of life,
These young men and women were from the poor villages and back streets of Cuba,
They brought the sun's warmth and delight,
They brought the lightning's energy and spark,
They brought the air of vitality and light,
They brought the moon's bewitching sophistication and surprise,
They brought the colour of life to their art,
This was a night of remembrance for the human soul,
What wondrous poetry in motion we can sprinkle and sparkle
if only we let our prejudices seep away,
Come, let go of the rat race sweat and pain,
Just ease back and let your mind be transported
to another time, another place, another type of magic,
Go enjoy a night at the ballet
and see human expression expressed through movement,
Witness tales of myth and wonder without a single word spoken,
One flick of the wrist
or the pointing of a finger
or even a tilted head
can say more and mean more than a hundred thousand spoken words,
Hearts full of love's deep lyrics told their tragic stories
through a mere touch or a caress,
Hearts were lacerated with a single swipe of a glance,
When two lover's shyly held hands and smiled
there was a thundering hush in the Hippodrome,
The lights changed from a cold blue to a pulsating red
and the orchestra showered the stage with glittering notes,
Drama, Music, Dance...
*This
was
Theatre.*
©Rangzeb Hussain
May 2, 2010
May 2, 2010 at 4:19 AM UTC
Across the ice a baritone
Projects his notes of steel,
A tenor’s harmonizing
Adds that melancholy feel
And the glory of the voices
Flows out through alders bare
And the listeners weep for Russia’s soul
And the tragedy found there.
The tragic melancholy
Found in every Russian heart
Liberated by the sadness
A fine harmony can impart.
Of the monolithic yesterdays,
Those forgotten fields of dead
And that fire within the *****
Which numbs the agony of the head.
Dark stains along the timber wall
Wood fire’s stones make steam
It fills the room with stifling heat
Which sweats the bodies clean.
Red wheals raised on shoulders
Birch branches whip the back
Whilst companion tones of maleness
Speak in vectors women lack.
Red larches in the foothills
Gold lantern light on snow,
The vastness of ancient steppes
Of Central Asia grow.
A viola’s velvet passion
Sighs beneath a cottage door
And the sadness in sensation
Brings grown men to weep once more.
The vastness of the terrain
The hardness of the land,
The bitter cold of northern wind,
Each freezing winter spanned
By Siberia’s lashing gales,
White snow is metres deep
And turquois ice as hard as steel
Beneath which... rivers creep.
Dostoyevsky,Kruschev,
Rasputin and the Tsars,
Great Lenin, Marx and Trotsky
And the swords of Horse Hussars.
Gorbachev the great redeemer,
Poor Yeltsin’s pale white skin
And the ****** found in Stalin's smile
Span the politics of sin.
This great Russian melancholy
Lies deep within the soul
It’s a legacy of yesterday
Of her history's brutal goal.
It’s a product of the suffering
Inherent in the past
Endured by legions of the people
Then dispensed with…
With a laugh!
Marshalg
@theBach
Mangere Bridge
13 April 2009
Jan 27, 2010
Jan 27, 2010 at 10:46 PM UTC
on this rumbling
stretch of tundra
no trees reach up
to soothe the sky
there is a pulling down
of wind tunnel vortex
like conifers in reverse
an icy howl
in the bonechill
of time
Translucent holes,
perfectly round, are dug
in glacial archeology
and in the sea below
gelid creatures lurk,
half-frozen
in the history of my
soul
Only moss and lichens
grow on the rock,
somehow softening the
rugged textures
of the wild landscapes
that seethe
just beneath my skin
and there, just
shy of the surface
is a quickening
a subtle pulse of veins
that pumps life
between the gales of
my heart's steppes
flushing out
the pain
somewhere
deep
within the private lotus
of my being
folioles unfurl
leafy shapes around
my organs
wrapping them like gifts
as they undulate in whorls
opening my petals
in renewed consciousness
and deliberation
as a new kind of
stamen
rises
dusty pollen
powdery
budding ripeness
bursting up
and out
of my deepest
centered
whirlpool pistil
nectar dripping
in viscous webs,
to be caught upon
the tongue of
a new dawning
My silky outer
wings of vegetation,
slender stalks of
filaments and anther
have been turned
into hot steel
They protect
the tender vulnerable
when burned
as poison words held up to my
watchful eyes,
are properly discerned
I give myself over
to this new power,
my back arched to fully embrace
what is to come,
a universe calling thunder,
the old patterns undone
I am ready
to reveal my all
as the goddess deep within
comes to release my gold
suffusing light through skin
conjured from me
a relentless strength,
ever-growing,
now tenfold
rising way past
soft-lit stratospheres
and orbiting
to
bold
Nov 5, 2017
Nov 5, 2017 at 6:05 PM UTC
Mon aux deux tiers divine,
Toute laine et marjolaine
De douceur et délicatesse,
Courrais-tu, bufflesse, les steppes
Avec ton ombre d'argile
A la recherche du plant de jouvence
Semé aux Treize Cyclones
Qui hantent les îles-fleurs du bout du monde ?
A chaque cyclone aux ailes brisées
Qu'offrirais-tu, Gilgamesh, mon ombre immortelle
Dans le nigredo causal et a-causal où se fond l 'abîme ? ?
Au Cyclone-gel, la baguette et le cerceau ?
Au Cyclone-mauvais, le taureau céleste ?
Au Cyclone-tempête, la Forêt de Cèdres ?
Au Cyclone-rafales, le corps de la Joyeuse ?
Au Cyclone-tourbillons, les hommes-scorpions ?
Au Cyclone-du Nord, les cyprès ?
Au Cyclone-poussières, les gazelles ?
Au Cyclone-du Sud, les Enfers ?
Au Cyclone-de l'Est, le Déluge ?
Au Cyclone-de l 'Ouest, la nuit d'étoiles ?
Au Cyclone-tornade, le sourire des hyènes ?
Au Cyclone-mortifère, le feu éphémère ?
Au Cyclone-souffleur, le feu éternel ?
Aug 23, 2019
Aug 23, 2019 at 2:44 AM UTC
Il y a des personne qui pour un court instant, comme un petit papillon de Madagascar,
peuvent vous sourie et satisfaire avec une innocence bienveillante si naturelle qu’on ne
trouve dans aucun endroit ou presque :
hammam de luxe !
Il y a des temples enfouis si inouïe qui illumine ma galaxie et te demande, pour guide.…
Oh, steppes arides Mexicaines, mes séculaires puits désert, mes horizons abandonné prés d’
Himalaya qui cherche routard et vie avec.
Huile brulés et larmes séché, enfance volé, démon si prés ne te demande rien : que guide.
Il y à toujours pour nous, les doigts d’une main dans une caresse sublime, parce que tes
bras, courre devant moi, :
Ne t’arête pas, car ton sourire éclate le jade dans blanc si minérale, parfum dans vert
sapin, j’irrigue ainsi et je cultive.Je donne la vie pour que tout ça, anime esprit, Himalaya, donne confiance dans mon éveille,voyage sans fin et vagabonde, les haut plateaux du thé :
« Marquise du haut : regard tout bas ! »
Suis ce fou errant, pour avant ce sale gamin à qui personne dessine :
Ton danse présent pollen mon sens et dans ma voix, je cour couleur de pluie sur ciel pour toi,
libérer mes ailles, un jour pour soie si fine, que tu vêtis dans robe hammam ,
dans Innocence marré Mexique qui Guides ce vol -Vien dans le mien, illumines !
ALEXANDRE STARK
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 7:04 AM UTC
Life is a coin toss between the bold and fearsome
Success a toss between perception and Journey
Destitute a toss between laziness and loyalty
Happiness a toss between compromise and fullfillment
And spirit is a free and strong willed creature with a sword in one hand
a bow at its side the steppes at his feet and an unbreakable mind.
Mar 2, 2010
Mar 2, 2010 at 7:17 AM UTC
i believe that there lives a counterpart
of me in Spain and in France -
equally critical - not me per se,
but two individuals to compensate
my efforts in England,
Eastern European, hell-bent
to overtax the happy meal and frozen foods
for "the busy lives of 21st century love-e-dub-e's;
a seance of unification might be far away
mind you;
they say they cite the Bible as if it
were an Encyclopaedia -
you reared the African as subhuman,
you think, that other European nations
will succumb to the African systematisation
necessary for integration?
you actually think i'll abandon my
mother tongue to engross myself
in your filthy history and sing god save our queen
like a kindergarten sing-along readying
myself for Oompa-Loompas?
oh i'm sure that's just due to your genetic
makeshift tents on the steppes of Mongolia;
any news from Mongolia? none.
any news from Kazakhstan? none;
except irony... or the great Tao principle:
forget the world and let the world forget you;
i'm not too eager on the Heidegger octopus either
having to be in the world and care for it -
or at least tax my existence with a concern for it.
but of course it's like an inbreeding principle:
little Britain meets the Empire,
Darth Asthmatic... coo khhh... coo khhh...
H vocalised is the best painting
of ancient static in televisions,
motivational ashes lost with digitalisation,
the kaleidoscope of flies and 8-eye spiders
hacking the flight with spider-web geometrics...
prolong the first two letters of the word Khan...
and i'm sure you'll genealogically stress
the origin of Pakistan as being in Mongolia.
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 7:40 PM UTC
Everyone’s so **** far
away
Everything is on steroids
And as all we know
Swells to sizes more
Than even god planed
They inevitably come in between us
The way a 70 inch TV splits a family apart
To opposite hemispheres of their “living”- room -world
“Can you hear me over there Brother? Sister?”
“Not listening.”
“Can’t see you.”
Electronic wedges that push us farther
And farther from our fathers
“Dad I just called because you never
answered my textual message
And email is too slow as you well know.”
“Come home son.” He concedes
“I lost my way home pop.”
“You’re right, I guess the 50’s are done and The Wonder Years
is long out of syndication.”
So I’m an alien on this ******* like stretch of land.
Ponce de Leon would claim it for his peninsula as
A peninsula of eternal life
A greater man than I would label it “The happiest place on earth.”
But all I know is this:
This earthen ***** might as well be an island off the coast of nowhere
Gainesville might as well be in Russia, rather
The Steppes of Asia Minor
And you most certainly are
An aberration from a softer night far ago
I guess I’ll see it all half full and live
In my State of Confusion
Located somewhere between the North and South Pole
Call it self pity, but no one but people like me understand
The concept of one million miles
Meet me halfway, someplace if you agree
Live in States of Unknown
So then you will
Always have a home
Dec 23, 2009
Dec 23, 2009 at 2:19 PM UTC
We had heard about the big steel-beasts.
For weeks, vicious rumors had spread
like wildfire across the steppes.
Nothing was safe in their path.
They left death and destruction,
thousands of deflowered
women & girls
in their wake.
Late last night,
we heard the clanking,
felt the rumbling,
the shattering of earth
outside the city skirts,
then dead quiet, nothing,
not a single sound.
Early this morning,
Svetlana stumbled-delirious,
dazed toward the center of town.
Blackened eyes & missing teeth
adorned her bruised face,
dried blood-lines faded
from the corners of her mouth.
It appeared as if her jaw was broken,
vacancy was written in her eyes.
A crimson stain on her torn skirt
marked the cleft between her legs.
A ******** arm band
hung around her neck.
She didn't say a word.
We heard the clanking again,
felt he rumbling,
the shattering of earth
as the Tigers left our village.
And by the way Svetlana looked,
quickly realized the rumors were true.
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 9:58 PM UTC
Chinese bells red tassels
scarlet swaying winds
Mongolian warriors on horseback
leather gauntlet falcons
grip with strong talons
Face-bent good and hot
Cheese curds steaming
in the cold winter night
on the mountain snow-covered
steppes step back front
door and took out to the
horizon horses drive towards
the mud and centre of our camp
Young girls wrestle in embroidered boots
helmets on lacquered heads black
as satin and moth wings...
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 12:28 AM UTC
We’re tying our shoes-- as we think about the day's gifts
Holding strings-- curling ribbons with latent sweat
"I’'ve heard they’ll pull us through-- we tie around each box
eyelets, through tunnels and catacombs."-- a shimmering luster abetting
beyond the sky.
Today we mourn those drained sausage-limbs at noon-time
--(Sallow-cheeked mistresses and fortunes abounding
for those who have time for such things.)
With tears
--hiding the feelings of those who have none
slapping the ground.
We see
every unfurling light
combine with blots of pity
to fortify prairie grass.
And I remember an old gravel highway that separates my family and church from geologic
build-up which the wind is slowly chewing.
I can't be with them-- like the western, sandy steppes of Nebraska,
I can't hold water, and their loving nourishment sinks through me.
My arms won't be like ribbons, in an embrace of the
dead’s remitting tendrils.
As I lay outstretched on the Sand Hills, shielding my belly from the desert sun;
boring water trapped in caverns under neatly wound sweat-bows and boxes
I, one day, too, cry emaciated tears.
Surely, we are tethered firmly to the spool, dangling with
tensity on the tines of breath, shimmering, aloft-- but also, don’t forget:
We are fastened by a knot above our leather casing
holding the body in-piece and being manipulated at once.
We decorate the boxes, in which we are to lie
with wet, green ribbon, pulled through rocky soil by course, chapped hands.
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 2:16 AM UTC
The little dog sits
staring out the large window
to the street
beyond
where he is a wolf on the Steppes
a jackal on the Serengeti
a coyote of the Mojave
But for now
he sits
Jan 6, 2013
Jan 6, 2013 at 11:57 PM UTC
The blue eagle and the demon of the steppes
in the last cab in Berlin
Legitimate defence
of lost souls
the red mill at the beggars' school
awaits the poor student
With the housemaid Know huntsmen how to hunt on pay-day
Know huntsmen how to hunt
as papa speculates
with the smile
By the dagger the dagger the dagger
the tiger of the seas dreams of happiness
Avenged
The vestal ****** of the Ganges cries out Vanity
when the flesh succumbs
Stop look and listen
the famous turkey spends a day of pleasure
turning round in an enchanted circle
with the pluck of a lion
M'sieur the major
My Paris
my uncle from America
my heart and my legs
slaves of beauty
admire the conquests of Nora
while someone asks for a typewriter
for the black pirate
It is not possible
that a woman dressed as the Merry Widow
could become the wind's prey
because the millionairess Madame Sans-Gene
leads a wild existence
in another's skin
Her son was right
Patrol-leader 129 who wears an Italian straw-hat
and is the ace of jockeys
is abandoning a little adventuress
for a woman
It is the April-Moon which chases the buffalo
to Notre-Dame of Paris
Oh what a bore the indomitable man
with clear eyes
wishes to judge him by the law of the desert
but the lovers with children's souls have gone away
Ah what a lovely voyage
- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/The-Staircase-With-A-Hundred-Steps#sthash.Ty7mN87W.dpuf
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 12:33 AM UTC
my eyes fell into my dreams last night...i searched for them for three million days...
i went to the halls but found only suits of rotten gold...i went to the movies but found only *********** with tiny worms fucking...i went to the bookstore but couldn't afford to enter...i went to the cemetery and tripped over all the empty graves...i went to the city but couldn't walk because i was hit by three billion cars...i went to the schools but found only ear less teenagers with red bull smiles...i went to the lunchroom and smelled the greasy spoons...i went to the barber but to many hairs filled my mouth and made it hard to breath...i went to the swimming pool but found polluted water and oily animals devouring any leftovers...i went to the hillside but the view was blocked by tall black clouds...i went to the forest but fell into a plastic bucket...i went to the mountain tops but found nothing not even snow...i went to the valley and threw up on all the dead bodies...i went to the steppes and found robotic horses with glaring red eyes and really bad breath...i went to the hospital and found only sickness and no health...i went to the ocean but could not swim with the dolphins because they tried to eat my clothes...i went to the islands and found only weapons sharpened with blood...i went to the stars but could not see...my eyes have fallen and i can't pick them up...
Jan 17, 2010
Jan 17, 2010 at 7:59 AM UTC
a useless cartographer
i would be,
as all roads
my love would lead me
back to thee..
all seas
would wash upon
thy shore....
all rivers fjords
and waterways
would be found to flow to your doorstep in a cascading
maze
meridean, ley lines,
all would be
tied up in bows and attached to your casement windows
mountain, plains, steppes
and vales would rest
adoring, in your garden pails
so i could not
be a cartographer.....no
useless would i be.
May 17, 2014
May 17, 2014 at 10:11 AM UTC
The arrival of senselessness
Is a great shadow over the earth,
a cooling cloud in the summer
causation of looking up--
Gift-givers wander the slopes and with packets of thought,
They run their fingers along the stones and the trees and the fields
Grassy,
Following the trails of clouds wandering just as inconsequent
Leaving tears as rain on the steppes and letting them drain into the deathly floors
asking them to give the ability for new things to drink
This is the true Holy Water
And a patchwork soul seeks, fixated,
answers to the crackled nature of their vessel
Running into the same stone of them, cancerous
soon left to sands and dust
Ozymandias
The blades of leaves rattle a sad salute
Their ragged branches sheathed xylem, a perfect skyscraper design
Preventing edema of the like kind
Show to me that this place in not but the momentary awareness of light, a stopping point in the infinite variation
To locate oneself in the rapid raveling of everything into one great big
Sorrowful tear, running from the eternal blackness of the night
that holds noting but the absence of itself.
Jan 6, 2019
Jan 6, 2019 at 2:49 PM UTC
I strolled among lavendills
in the pithy piney plodding hills
bearing the brunt of burdensome ********
as I garnished grins of whippoorwills.
On a plateau-ish plain of prickly peet
I felt the bog beneath my feet
tickling my toes with ****** tainted thorns,
I remembered gnarling days, and stood forlorn.
Pickled poesy pomagroups
foretold of future ladle scoops
in caligrating loop the loops in styles
reminding me of marching troops.
In shifting shylock shapes of time
with ripping radishes of rhyme
I began my daring dew descent
to the lowly muppet mugging climes.
When, on sordid stony steppes I stood,
amid the brash and boorish wood,
wenting where I was, I brought
a hinting hackle pang of good.
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 3:53 PM UTC
Who drives the wind?
The battered steppes in the North
Stand mute with cracked lips.
Where the roar of ocean crash resounds,
The wind whips like some old tyrant.
He whistles, remembering her pleasant face,
Long dead.
Then he takes up the whip and whistles some more,
As he strikes lightning on the tattered shore.
Nov 20, 2016
Nov 20, 2016 at 2:53 PM UTC
Beaucoup de ces dieux ont péri
C'est sur eux que pleurent les saules
Le grand Pan l'amour Jésus-Christ
Sont bien morts et les chats miaulent
Dans la cour je pleure à Paris
Moi qui sais des lais pour les reines
Les complaintes de mes années
Des hymnes d'esclave aux murènes
La romance du mal aimé
Et des chansons pour les sirènes
L'amour est mort j'en suis tremblant
J'adore de belles idoles
Les souvenirs lui ressemblant
Comme la femme de Mausole
Je reste fidèle et dolent
Je suis fidèle comme un dogue
Au maître le lierre au tronc
Et les Cosaques Zaporogues
Ivrognes pieux et larrons
Aux steppes et au décalogue
Portez comme un joug le Croissant
Qu'interrogent les astrologues
Je suis le Sultan tout-puissant
Ô mes Cosaques Zaporogues
Votre Seigneur éblouissant
Devenez mes sujets fidèles
Leur avait écrit le Sultan
Ils rirent à cette nouvelle
Et répondirent à l'instant
À la lueur d'une chandelle.
907
to me:
oh **** your insecurities
and your worries about life
(there's an old tale i reread)
I.
those books you've read
have corrupted your heart
you've become so cold
you've forsaken the world
II.
dark clouds begin to bundle
on that mountain you call your head
then tears roll down from yer empty stare
hitting you fast like german tanks
falling on you hard like Jogjan rain
and still you think its the world's fault
you blame others for this assault
open your eyes, my man, and realize
that its you who'd be terrorized
if you kept on calling on wraiths
to show you the way to the grave
III.
stand your ground and endure!
do not fret in the face of doom
because i know that in you
there's still something pure
like the steppes of Burkhan Khaldun
where Konguroy placed her lure
during the mornings covered with dew
IV.
i never liked myself
i never wanted to live
i never loved anyone
i never speak the truth
V.
in a chaotic rebirth of all things true
i believe you also would see yourself
anew
Dec 19, 2016
Dec 19, 2016 at 11:26 AM UTC
Borodin's On the Steppes of Central Asia
Lost in a remote province of the mind
A youth attends to the cheap gramophone
Again: On the Steppes of Central Asia,
A recording by a mill town orchestra
Of no repute. But it is magic still:
While washing his face and dressing for work
In a clean, pressed uniform of defeat,
For ten glorious minutes he is not
A function, a shop-soiled proletarian
Of no repute. Beyond the landlord’s window,
Beyond the power lines and the pot-holed street,
He searches dawn’s horizons with wary eyes
For wild and wily Tartars, horsemen out
To blood the caravans for glory and gold.
A youth greets the day as he truly is:
A cavalryman, a soldier of the Czar,
Whose uniform is stained with victory.
Jan 2, 2017
Jan 2, 2017 at 7:42 AM UTC
Your door
was always
open -
this time,
I entered
from the weatherbeaten
steppes
of my non-being
never to leave
again.
Aug 13, 2010
Aug 13, 2010 at 9:33 AM UTC
Different kinds of beautiful, black, brown,
red, yellow, deep blue eyes, slanted ones,
drums beating against a mountain side,
flutes floating through jungle vines, soft
prayers murmured on golden steppes,
mosques, cathedrals, churches on a country
hill, puppies, swallows, mountain lion
cubs, long, blonde hair, ***** curls, swirls
of laughter, tears of solace, tender drops
of rain upon her face, breezes blowing
sails homeward, silent moments between
passion and sunrise.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Nov 11, 2022
Nov 11, 2022 at 5:16 PM UTC