"strewing" poems
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
******* up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.
Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.
15.1k
wanna twist and shout
fist and clout
the silent wrestle
a lapse of consciousness
bereft of science
and hard as metal
black and blue
***** girl, ***** pronoun game
strewing the fate in a storm
of words strung like wire
what do you want?
don’t call me like a woman
and don’t call me one either
you don’t got any other way
to communicate
it’s blame it on anything you don’t got
close the chapter and the verse
with a love curse
an empty ball and chain
because it’s all you and no me
Apr 5, 2018
Apr 5, 2018 at 6:58 PM UTC
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots,
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
3.3k
The city spits and swallows
Leaving dirt pressed against its lips
The hollow shell consumes
Personality, Imperfections;
Colored veins prove existence,
Vulnerability.
The city cracks
Open, the streets divide
The human marketplace
Is ever-growing, ever-changing;
Voices are lost in the medium,
Trapped.
She sits next to me,
I look at her, *******
On a cigarette;
Happiness sits on the
Top shelf, sleeping,
Wishing.
She touches her lips,
Feels the dirt, wipes it clean;
The blood in her mouth
Leaks, lingers
Red like a plum, cut,
Scattered.
She dances
For the people cold and
Lifeless, A product of obsession;
Full of sickness, full of eyes
Watching her move from the dark,
Silent.
The city spits and swallows
But never washes
The dirt piling up
And the blood strewing out;
Like seduction in motion,
Gasping.
May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012 at 10:19 AM UTC
Death himself in the rain . . . death himself . . .
Death in the savage sunlight . . . skeletal death . . .
I hear the clack of his feet,
Clearly on stones, softly in dust;
He hurries among the trees
Whirling the leaves, tossing he hands from waves.
Listen! the immortal footsteps beat.
Death himself in the grass, death himself,
Gyrating invisibly in the sun,
Scatters the grass-blades, whips the wind,
Tears at boughs with malignant laughter:
On the long echoing air I hear him run.
Death himself in the dusk, gathering lilacs,
Breaking a white-fleshed bough,
Strewing purple on a cobwebbed lawn,
Dancing, dancing,
The long red sun-rays glancing
On flailing arms, skipping with hideous knees
Cavorting grotesque ecstasies:
I do not see him, but I see the lilacs fall,
I hear the scrape of knuckles against the wall,
The leaves are tossed and tremble where he plunges among them,
And I hear the sound of his breath,
Sharp and whistling, the rythm of death.
It is evening: the lights on a long street balance and sway.
In the purple ether they swing and silently sing,
The street is a gossamer swung in space,
And death himself in the wind comes dancing along it,
And the lights, like raindrops, tremble and swing.
Hurry, spider, and spread your glistening web,
For death approaches!
Hurry, rose, and open your heart to the bee,
For death approaches!
Maiden, let down your hair for the hands of your lover,
Comb it with moonlight and wreathe it with leaves,
For death approaches!
Death, huge in the star; small in the sand-grain;
Death himself in the rain,
Drawing the rain about him like a garment of jewels:
I hear the sound of his feet
On the stairs of the wind, in the sun,
In the forests of the sea . . .
Listen! the immortal footsteps beat!
1.6k
. . . go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit,
your house is the last before the infinite, . . .
(from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Eingang", MacIntyre translation)
The light which strikes my retina
as I look at the Great Galaxy in Andromeda
left there two million years ago.
(Hominids made tools from stone then, but had not yet
learned the use of fire.
Genetic material from certain of these hominids has been passed
from one being to another and now is in my own body.)
Millennia from now, humans who have
colonized the farthest reaches of our galaxy,
laboriously creating and maintaining Earth-like atmospheres,
will marvel that there once was a place so perfectly suited to
human life
that such labor was unnecessary. (Just as we marvel that orchids,
whose precise temperature and humidity requirements would seem to necessitate a greenhouse, grow wild in the Amazon.)
I cannot believe in a personal God,
intervening in human affairs, but stand in awe
of the terrible force which set the stars and galaxies in motion
--strewing them like so much confetti--;
the life-force running through each living creature,
as straight and true as a ray of light from that galaxy in Andromeda,
willing us to live, grow and be fruitful.
Jul 30, 2017
Jul 30, 2017 at 4:04 PM UTC
Time is a Tyrant - this truth well known
To all who have found and lost -
A Tyrant dividing each to their own
In a game of the hour glass' cost.
"Time is a Tyrant," said the Nurse to the Babe
On the day the Babe was born,
"So be sure to serve it well, behave,
Or forever be caught forlorn."
And the Babe that grew was as careful as mice
Not to stir the temper of mighty Time;
He ducked and he cowered, he froze into ice
And the frost on his heart turned to rime.
Then one day, as the Babe-grown-Man walked in the woods,
Hurrying so as never to tarry,
He was stopped in his tracks at the sight of an Angel
Whose treasure of love 'twas his burden to carry.
They walked arm in arm, this Angel and Man,
Till the sun in the leaves filtered emerald hue,
Then he down on one knee and sobbingly sang:
"I love, it is true, I love..."
But there in his head, as the Nurse had said,
Was Time, the Tyrant of ever,
And the Man, now standing, "I hate you," he said,
"I will love you... but never, but never."
The Angel fled, with tears on pale cheeks,
And white feathers strewing the air,
But the Man, left behind, was catching the streaks
Of her misery, soft as her hair.
Years passed in the wood, and the sunlight fled
The boughs where the lovers had been,
And now in their stead was Time's cruel tread
Spinning loaming of poisonous green.
Yet, many years after, the Man returned
And found his Angel there.
They sat in the shade of the sun, last it burned,
As he told her, at last, still, "I care.
"But Time is a Tyrant, for this you must know,
With a chain put around every heart;
The moment I loved you and thought love could grow
Time's chain grew tighter and forced us to part."
For Time is a Tyrant - this truth well known
To all who have played and lost,
Who have struggled and fought just to keep their own
In the game of the hour glass' cost.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 6:41 AM UTC
A flower opens its head
amid a pilgrimaging fire...
one-pointed in color, alone
knowing what it means.
Vibrating the life of that color
unbrokenly--a vow perfectly kept.
Our earth's heart strewing her
joyous criers...something an
extraterrestrial would anoint its
forehead-space with.
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 1:05 AM UTC
Sometimes I forget for an instant
who we are.
In those moments where:
I hold your head in my lap and brush my hands through your hair.
You hold me captive against you under the freezing stream of water in the shower.
I watch the lights dance across your face as we drive through small towns late at night.
You stand behind me in the kitchen next to the stove, strewing kisses across my back,
my shoulders, my neck.
In those moments you are everything. You are mine.
And she doesn't exist.
Aug 10, 2016
Aug 10, 2016 at 11:47 AM UTC
i climbed mount olympus
i said
"hi dad!"
--
i sailed with jason on the argo
ya shoulda been there!
--
i sat naked on a bench in central park
a beautiful young woman comes up and............
.......
----
----
and......
........we rode with chiron across the river styx
right into hades
all of our friends were
waiting there for us
--
she sat naked on a bench in central park
the crowds gathered
strewing flowers!
--
abandoned children pretending to be
betrayed lovers betrayed by love
really really break the HEART
--
a country that has ever lynched people
because of skin color
isnt free
--
a country that has ever lynched people
because of skin color
will end up with people afraid to
question their leaders
--
a country that has ever lynched people
because of skin color
will probably allow their leaders
to foment a terrosist attack upon them
and blame someone else
Sep 27, 2010
Sep 27, 2010 at 1:38 PM UTC
I put my hand out the window
wave after wave of summer air
rolling under and over my finger tips
dipping up and down with the unseen current
You sing along, under your breath,
to the song on the radio
your feet in brown socks
propped up on the dash
Your arm is around my shoulder
and we drive through the clear night
my head leaning closer to your shoulder
as we turn down the dirt road to your house
The crack and pop of gravel
under the wheels of the car
punctuated by the crack of limbs
randomly strewing across the drive
We park and turn the car off;
I lean into you, the warmth of your arm
drawing me in as your lips touch
the crown of my head
I kick my feet out the window
laying back against your chest
and we rest in this manner
knowing that, soon, this night must come to an end.
May 17, 2010
May 17, 2010 at 7:00 PM UTC
we cannot condone those
who trash a writing zone
they waltz in and litter the abode
as if it's theirs alone
well excuse us for not liking
the bad state of our cone
before they turned up everything
had a tidiness in tone
*the ******* has no sense*
of where it should hang out
it just delights in strewing
its self liberally about
we're all wishing that it'll
be on the way out
cause none of us are
fussed at its piling tout
our environment is under
a waste cloud
may we soon see a lifting
of its grotty shroud
Oct 17, 2017
Oct 17, 2017 at 7:27 AM UTC
I Am Vertical
But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
******* up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.
Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them —
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 10:11 PM UTC
[by Edna St. Vincent Millay]
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by.
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Or that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Or that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I always known: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales.
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
Sep 20, 2017
Sep 20, 2017 at 5:05 PM UTC
I remember the castle, the foreboding yellow castle
breath from the horses causing cosmic clouds just above the earth
unveil your iron hearts and show us your worth
An early morning messenger carrying news to half the land
bundles of happenings undersea and over land
lives, paragraphs and pages to sell
many different conclusions to tell
most breathing and some using dying
Fresh footprints on the cold white path
showing bright the setting moon
strewing diamonds on frosted grass
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 12:20 AM UTC
#Despair
God knows them.
They are what they drop:
Subhuman trash
Strewing litter
Fouling creation
Transtrashification;
God sees them.
They will answer
To Him.
Trash is thrown out
then burned.
Apr 22, 2023
Apr 22, 2023 at 9:38 AM UTC
With promises of the rising sun galore
Down the oceans deep & dark she diffused;
Churned by the finest unheard-of melodies
Contrived the tunes so soft and lyrics so sweet
Concealed it solemnly within a mysterious seashell, did she?
The ocean floor whipped and whacked vehemently
Unsettling the ***** & span seabed
Unbridling the galaxy of buoyant seashells
Washing up these secret treasure troves
Strewing them across those vagrant seashores.
Was she awaiting the passionate sublime Pursuer
Heeding to unravel the divine euphoric ode she once hummed?
Many a seashore he spurred & scrambled
Gone berserk for that special soothing one
Came across a myriad of elegant supreme seashells
Never found the mystical superlative one he'd been screening for.
He once whispered the code of love
Mellowing down her mysterious mazy ears
Unlocking a spree of pulsating sonnets
The odes of love from deep down her throbbing soulful heart.
How naive of him all these years
He had just discovered the evasive enigmatic shell
The mystical musical mellifluent conch shell
With its eternal pristine music well preserved for the ad rem.
Jan 16, 2021
Jan 16, 2021 at 8:20 AM UTC
I scribble about planets strewing from the face
They’re hip-hop graffiti or spiting images of
exo-lifeforms.
Abstract wavelengths circling from heads
canvasing an earth unlike what i’ve
kaleidoscope before
You’ve s e e n it.
The face
The endless kamikaze from exoplanets
swaddling behind bulging eyeballs.
of supernova’s and B-72 solar systems
My birdbrain.
Jun 16, 2018
Jun 16, 2018 at 9:50 PM UTC
Though he's gone, life goes on as before --
The rising sun still announces dawn;
At night the moon paces my bedroom floor,
But now my lonely heart cries out "Begone!"
Without him, seasons still come and go,
Callous Spring comes strewing her flowers;
I pay no heed to Nature's to and fro,
In despair is how my heart spends its hours
Since he left, the joys I knew have flown,
At once, like startled birds taking wing;
The last of the summer's roses have blown,
Not a trace remains of our fairy ring
When he left, he took my hopes and dreams,
Strange, he was so different from the rest;
Now my abandoned heart silently screams
While I stare at the sun like one possessed
O, yes, I know his love was not real!
Just a seed sown by a desperate hand,
Expecting to harvest my heart's ideal --
A castle of dreams built upon quicksand
Well, now there are no seeds left to sow,
But in failure I have found meaning:
Imagined love can never thrive and grow,
And grants harvests too sparse for the gleaning
Apr 14, 2018
Apr 14, 2018 at 12:46 PM UTC
[by Edna St. Vincent Millay]
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
Sep 21, 2017
Sep 21, 2017 at 10:13 AM UTC
The tide rolls in with a gentle breeze
as your music fills the air
with silky sweet tones
that echo this time we share.
Days of warmth and sunshine
daydreaming on the beach
cerulean skies, billowy clouds
feel within our reach.
The tide rolls in with ruffling waves
caressing the soles of our feet.
Hearts wishing summer could last
we know that time is fleet.
On moonlit nights of reverie
while strolling hand in hand,
ghost ***** dance and dart
on the cool and dampened sand.
The sea rolls in and steals our hearts
in return she leaves her gifts
strewing them at our feet:
A pearly pink shell, a lustrous black stone
arrive with her gentle beat,
the ancient ebony tooth of a shark,
a glimpse of a long ago past,
a feather dropped by a seagull in flight,
bits of smooth colored glass –
golden, azure, and rose,
amber, turquoise, and green
to be loved and treasured, to remember her by
when winter seems endless
and sunshine only a dream.
Mar 28, 2017
Mar 28, 2017 at 2:39 PM UTC
I show no mercy for the weak
They’re shattered branches caught
in small maelstroms in the air.
I show no remorse for bonebrittles
They cover skulls with mummy bandages
throwing them into creaking galleon beds.
With breeding wantons from cauldrons
and crinolines strewing quicksilver bars
of metal
I synapse ***** in shock of their
existence.
They seem to be invisible wraiths
disguised as Presbyterian halo’s in
the brain
Jun 16, 2018
Jun 16, 2018 at 9:33 PM UTC
A Day of Reckoning
Forenoon, it had been raining during the night
the wizened winter landscape was now green
and amongst olive trees long-legged sheep grazed;
their pastor and, on occasions, executioner, sat on
a boulder casting dreams into the future; man and
beast, rustic peace, pity I hadn’t a camera.
On my way to the village to buy the papers, a sheep
had been run over by a truck, with its stomach burst
open and its content glinting in the sun, it was still
alive. Ah, you dumb animal abandoned by everyone
it looked at me without any hope of deliverance,
so I reversed my car and ran over its head.
As the skull was crushed its eyes popped out, landed
in the middle of the road that now had eyes to see
with, the shock of this made it shudder a long rent in
the asphalt ***** black tears trickled. Quickly
I threw the eyes into the thicket which was instantly
transformed into a field of tinkling bluebells.
From nowhere a road gang of small, denim- clad men
with big hats appeared, they were badly paid lived
on road kills. Expertly strewing soft sand on blood, filled
cracks with healing asphalt, and off they drove with
their dinner. Empty road it had no knowledge of what
had just occurred, it was up to me to remember.
Jul 30, 2016
Jul 30, 2016 at 7:07 AM UTC