"subterranean" poems
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
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Paper thin top soil
Cracks seep through
Red dirt.
Bloodless gashes
Simmering summer soil
Baked turf.
Rolled gold haze
Aches as the
Country stretches its skin-
Near breaks
******** teeth
Tight white itches
Red earth fit-
To burst in a
Dark cloud of dust,
Choking soft as to soak
The moisture fresh
From your lungs.
Blinding blue sky
Set for worship
On a tall horizon
Too far, too high
For common souls-
To float on a
Breath of sweet dry air,
Eternal journey to sunset
Small piece of a dream
To chase a grey cloud
From sky to west.
Where subterranean
Creeks used to slip by
Rise in a slope of land
Where water once carved
Its roam
Now the winds sweep
All traces away
Back toward the sea,
And fair beyond
The aching dry eyes
Of the sons of
This red earth,
A mist lies awake
And prays for rain.
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 5:19 AM UTC
A one thousand page hymn
singing from lotus petal pages
bound on hummingbird wings
Subtle energies
unfolding, unfurling
unwinding within
Celestial prophecies
unrooting in elements
of oceans of water of air
Gaia and Uranus
blooming from
aetheric nests
Subterranean spelunking
unweaving a gossamer cloak
from plumes of the Red-Tailed Hawk
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 5:10 PM UTC
shallow creeper
blindly seeks
subterranean passage
horizontal
push and ******
fingered shoots
in compliant ground
purple sword
arcs skyward
a deception
yet to unfurl
gold to conceal
the tangle
underneath
perennation
in unfavorable
seasons
propagates
subversive
perpetual
regeneration
Oct 12, 2016
Oct 12, 2016 at 12:46 PM UTC
Seldom doth man stop and stare
At the caste iron manhole cover there,
Seldom doth he analyze
The majesty, which beneath it lies.
The pipe work systems vast and long
Dark catacombs so precise and strong,
Buried deep beneath our feet
Extending forth from street to street,
Out across the breadth of town
Those secret fluids trickle down.
Laser levels carve the pathway
Through the walls of solid stone,
Shovels scrape and dig with effort
Forging hard trajectories home.
Digging, digging metal mountains
Sweat cascades upon the brow,
We lay the pipes in straight formation
Precision's satisfaction now.
An Artisan's great work is hidden
Lost beneath the earth's grey stone,
Appreciation camouflaged in that,
The cast iron manhole stands alone.
Magnificence unrealized
For deep beneath your feet,
A subterranean Michelangelo's
Sisteen Chapel, lays discreet.
Unsuspected rivers
Flowing darkly to the sea
In caverns of unwanted waste
Quite unbeknown to thee.
Vaulting brickwork chambers
Which are ancient works of art,
Carry oceans of excretement
Far from where their journey's start.
With thunder's crash and lightning flash
And torrents of cold rain,
The road's awash and gutters flow
Through roadside grates to drain.
Gushing torrents cascade down
In waves of flowing might
To the storm water system
Which promptly swallows it from sight.
Magic, you say ?
Nay, nay I say unto you
That the drain layers artistry
Is unappreciated, that's true !
That the Herculean effort wrought
In winning his great fights
Is largely lost to all and sundry
Who avoid construction sites.
They miss the planning and the layout
And meticulousness too
And the rubber seals which stop the leaks
Which really bother you.
The massive holes and danger
Of being buried in collapse
And the wondrous satisfaction
Of achieving downhill flows... Perhaps!
Marshalg
Apprentice drain layer
MHX Beachcroft site and Eastport
19 September 2009
Jan 22, 2010
Jan 22, 2010 at 3:08 PM UTC
Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress—to assist the work
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself )
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves;—
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart’s desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Wcre called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,—the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!
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sounds of the engorged worm’s lumbering steps,
they pierce not so stinging as the golden glow of orbs outside your window.
Quietude will find no home here.
neither will that longed-for sense.
what we want,
the ‘soul sleep,’
rests further,
further still, and away from finger tips,
gently rest me in myself,
to sweetly mine the interiors of subterranean caverns,
within which, we held exiled domain for millennia before we were men.
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 3:19 PM UTC
Boundaries converge
subduction, descension
divergent margins widen
convective from the core
red hot and sticky
hardening to obsidian
succumb to subterranean pull
an infinitesimal slide below
dense and pressured soil
the slow parting seam
a rift becomes a chasm
consuming solid ground
Nov 10, 2016
Nov 10, 2016 at 11:54 AM UTC
My grandmother likes salami, God, and bougainvilleas
I like to think she likes tenuous pink things-
but then there’s the salami.
One day she taught her daughters to string neck-
laces from bougainvillea petals
like-ponies-in-a-junkyard
I think I chewed too much bubblegum in mass
because I picture God pink
an ethereal globe of a poppable pale pink.
And for some reason, I like to think Brother
Charles saw that too
I bet my lungs are somewhat pink:
more pink than my berry red blood
but less pink, sweet and/or hairy
than a cotton candy poodle.
I forget if they were strawberries or rasp-
berries too
There are things that are pink
but then there are things that are pink
and shadowless.
Like subterranean lungs,
God, the future, and
the smell of flamingos in the dark
The future is still pink and
somewhat fruity
like a lukewarm strawberry milkshake blushing,
or was it maybe just the taste
of my pepto-bismol stained lips.
One of those ponies was my mom
Mar 29, 2016
Mar 29, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC
You can identify your own flaws by scrutinizing strangers.
I watched a woman
from across a platform
at the subway station:
Straight, dishwater-blonde hair
glimmering in the subterranean fluorescence;
striking posture—
a dancer's figure—
and a thrifty ensemble that bespoke good taste
in spite of budgetary constrictions.
She pulled a circular compact from her purse
the way people in films exhume a pack of cigarettes.
Then, in deliberate fashion,
she removed a pill and swallowed it.
Birth control is like receiving a governor's pardon
in the process of planning a crime.
I resent her having that kind of indemnity.
I pass judgment on assumptions of character,
high on the blissful soapbox of bigotry.
As that pill crested the ridges of her teeth
and met the soft tissue of her tongue, then esophagus,
my mind conjured a phantasmagoria of lewd images
on the surrounding subway walls--
more a reflection of my character
than hers.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 11:49 PM UTC
1225
Its Hour with itself
The Spirit never shows.
What Terror would enthrall the Street
Could Countenance disclose
The Subterranean Freight
The Cellars of the Soul—
Thank God the loudest Place he made
Is license to be still.
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1631
Oh Future! thou secreted peace
Or subterranean woe—
Is there no wandering route of grace
That leads away from thee—
No circuit sage of all the course
Descried by cunning Men
To balk thee of thy sacred Prey—
Advancing to thy Den—
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from the vantage point
of the triangle of desire,
all i see are the delicate hands of Rodin,
which now have become your chiseled face.
as the world sleeps at night
i wet my pillow with tears.
tears from the joy
of knowing the intense ways
in which i love you,
deep within my subterranean mind.
love
knows no possession ....
yet i covet you,
all of you,
even the concept of you.
why did you come into my life
like a whirlwind
only to then vanish like a mirage?
© 2022
Feb 27, 2022
Feb 27, 2022 at 10:02 AM UTC
Merging into one
The Stars, The Moons, The Suns
Nocturnal creatures run
In their illuminescent spectrum
Subterranean surfaces
Hidden from the waves
Truly a cold
Cold-hearted grave
Still somehow we still manage
To get laid...
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 11:42 AM UTC
Thirsting
For subterranean
Blue morphology
Azure dreams
Flitting about
On butterfly wings
Mining stalagmites and
Stalactites
Sipping nectar
Numinous ruminations
Illuminating
Analogous mimetics
Allegories of the Cave
An altar for
Pluming rhetoric
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 4:55 AM UTC
Bone-white moon.
Lacrimosa caught
in the mechanisms.
Can you see me?
Of course not.
I blend in
with the sawgrass
and the catacombs.
With beach glass
and stones the color
of rust. I am a
microcosm.
Can you hear me?
My tragedy is in
the way I keep quiet.
Silence like ashes.
I am ethereal now.
This is my requiem.
Send my regards
to Mykonos.
Burn the screaming harp.
I am subterranean now.
Someday it will all turn
to gold.
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 1:27 AM UTC
Oatmealed and omeletted, start to a dull grey Seattle day
Mutual “Good morning” yawns wait the elevator gruzz
Cheery maid vacumates my room in a swirl of efficiency
Brundling my notes and my PC together I walk to work
Strumphing along beside the fumes of the grundling traffic
Email mountains confabulate the uncoffeed hordes
Typed kerattle the calm before the budget storm
Subterranean stocks desphorror of legal gamblers
Bonehead logic meets dumbling marketing aspirations
Now silent nerbling excuses of cur-whipped executives
Micawber’s message crystal in strangression of promises
Fundamental economics the only possible bankerage
Blood will flow in abattoir of management incastrophies
Doe-like and frembling in the light of impending execration
The stapression painfully personal as reality bites as last
Beer time comfrunks gather early in a huddle of hope
Sheep-like they absorb the tendralations of others’ fears
Remonstressing their misfortune in a depression of dinner
Relaxed at last in a hopefindation of beer goggle logic
Sleepfully staring at the mortgage arreared ceiling
My thankful escape to the Murakamied Sputnik symphony
Harmony in the silence of solitaricious nightcap with Hilton Mark
Wishing I was home now with my cuddlicious girl again
Grateful for loving and living in this aventacular world
I quietly srift off to sleep in a snozzle of sweet dreams
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 9:28 AM UTC
It's alienation across the nation.
End of the break
the whistle's blowing
The sailors going only a short way
to heavens
Subterranean souls, yet
extraterrestrial minds
(I want to have a magnificent, celestial time)
Someone is dead
True, someone might be
curled in dread, somewhere
But the staff chooses not to
voice these concerns
to their guests
They-are-all
transported
to a place where their veins
don't show up blue
under that black light, yellow
dans-le-ciel
It's a dalliance for souls
(They are all lost.)
A denouement for souls
(How much does it cost?)
Better question,
who sends them here
(Every zephyr is cold)
who sends them here
to die and behold?
If I had a friend
they would ask,
"Why so alone?"
Because I move with the
Tintinnabulation across the nation.
People saying the most
cringe-worthy---
Like the nation
I fear I have become
an imbrication
repeating myself in every
application
Working on that steamboat
the-band-wagon
isn't as good as it gets
Saccharine, summery lake
Do we, perhaps, need to escape?
And, perhaps, we can.
Dominated as we are
by Society, who is crying in need
Believes we must be a
panoply!
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 4:34 PM UTC
The girl’s corneas expand over the small black abyss of pupil
Tides of blue and hazel rising over onyx isles
An unhinged eyelash balances precariously on its neighbor
It evaporates with her quick blink
Directly beneath her right eye
Below the mottled eggplant shadows
The corpse of a capillary drains among the freckles
Subterranean rivers of vein
Pulse under thin skin
Her nose is spherical
Etched by soft papery scars
Pores round and gazing
Culminating in a uniform valley
Lips are soft and pink and unkissed
A source for a small steady trickle of pride
Her mother’s lips
But behind the outer façade
The seamed surface is rough with nervous nibbles
Ribboned with scars of worries and troubles
She lacks fourteen teeth
Absent since the womb
Those she has are either sickly infants or filled with grainy mystery metallics
Some entirely fabricated with spatulas of amalgam
Yellowed and cracking
Rough and worn
Spongy inner marrow screaming with pain
She hides the stony incisors from view
The hair
Curling and waving
Kissing with reptilian tongues at her cheeks
Neck
Forehead
Framing her face in brambles and cowlicks
Indecisive of its true form
Fuzzy with moisture
Unwilling to obey
The strands of a gorgon
A monstrous tangle of personality
Instantly recognizable
Her hands attempt to soothe the undulating tendrils
But they anger
As stubborn as her
Refuse treatment
She gives up
Rinses her hands
And turns away from the mirror
Sighing
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 11:48 PM UTC
✓My favorite weapon
✓Bikini ski boat
✓Fluorescent sand
✓Her eyes immaculate
✓Keys to the prophet's house
✓Emotional screening device
✓1 cup of sun, 3 teaspoons of rain
✓Third world treasure map & saxophone
✓Alternate flightpaths
✓Extra parachute
✓Mediocre Shakespeare
✓Poison pen letters
✓Getaway car & escape route
✓Ladies in waiting (in lingerie)
✓Subterranean lips
✓A pinch of film noir
✓Night vision
✓Antarctic scenarios
✓Fountain of remembrance
✓Policy of containment
✓Silhouette machine
✓Water wings
✓Pillow
Mar 14, 2025
Mar 14, 2025 at 10:12 AM UTC
Glitz and glamour
Subterranean armed bandits
Streetwalker zombies
Feb 14, 2014
Feb 14, 2014 at 4:18 AM UTC
With frenetic horns he gores
The limp woman
Nipple-aired
Draped on his bulging forearms
Undoubtedly bronzed
By Mediterranean suns
Or paled
By subterranean shadows
She is either praying or panting
Fainting or fawning
Framed
In an unimagined tense
Sep 2, 2016
Sep 2, 2016 at 10:48 PM UTC
Hovering, its gentle, gleam a'glitter,
Sun rays hugging so daintily the plains of grass
That it could have been akin to quiet coveting
Of their transient green so far from its grasp
Then, as if in secret rising from the earth's coat,
From blades made chartreuse with sunset's caress,
There lifts a drunken, blanketed quiet that fill-
In preparation for the night- the land's every crevasse
Upon the branches arching, merging, enweaving,
Where the last few robins had been orchestrating,
The leaves give their tiny bodies up to the fading breeze;
A waltz so natural both need not bother hesitant contemplating
In dappling, splotching, sparks of amber scintillating a hue,
The trees too the sun embraces; the shades of sunlight
Creating a calico on its surface, still dull greens and greys amidst
Its autumn forgery, aureate bleeding bright
Nocturnal symphonies crescendo in harmonic chirps, croaks, and hoots;
As sunlight spools it's last golden threads to defy it's cruel god or master,
Who reigns, an even more kingly victory, wins last of battles, drags the sun down
To horizon's prison- subterranean capture.
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019 at 11:52 AM UTC
The fat lady came out first,
tearing our roots and moistening drumskins.
The fat lady
who turns dying octopuses inside out.
The fat lady, the moon's antagonist,
was running through the streets and deserted buildings
and leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the corners
and stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feasts
and summinging the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hills
and filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.
The graveyards, yes the graveyards
and the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,
and dead, pheasants and apples of another era,
pushing it into our throat.
There were murmurings from the jungle of *****
with the empty women, with hot wax children,
with fermtented trees and tireless waiters
who serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.
There's no other way, my son, ***** There's no other way.
It's not the ***** of hussars on the ******* of their ******
nor the ***** of cats that inadvertently swallowed frogs,
but the dead who scratch with clay hands
on flint gates where clouds and desserts decay.
The fat lady came first
with the crowds from the ships,s taverns, and parks.
***** was delicately shaking its drums
among a few little girls of blood
who were begging the moon for protection.
Who could imagine my sadness?
The look on my face was mine, but now isn't me,
the naked look on my face, trembling for alcohol
and launching incredible ships
through the anemones of the piers.
I protect myself with this look
that flows from waves where no dawn would go.
I, poet without arms, lost
in the vomiting multitude,
with no effusive horse to shear
the thick moss from my temples.
The fat lady went first
and the crowds kept looking for pharmacies
where the bitter tropics could be found.
Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arrived
did the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.
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My name is stolen like a Spaniard
Inquisition,
My heritage barely a patch of fog,
What is the truth of myself unwritten?
" Your name is....You shall be called"
My father once said,
But I sign this name at the end of no poem,
Are you sure this is my name?
Have you navigated the flows
Of lava in my bloodstreams,
My geographical mind that beckons
A deep bitter valley,
Dark beautiful mountains that have
Reclaimed by nature what my people
Claimed her?
Can you see my subterranean pyramids,
My great moist jungles,
Gutting out advanced mathematical models,
Bleeding precise positions of stars,
I can cry the Winter Solstice,
Oh my proud heart pounds
Through my chest with dreams of then,
When the Coyote was sacred and the
Nature of all things was balanced
Even in the darkest days.
Am I Gonzales from the old Spaniard name?
Does my brown skin and hairless
Arms not cry for the Aztec of my ancient
Fathers?
The root of my root,
The flesh of my flesh,
The veiny branches of a family tree
Where wild flowers grow in
The words of the Aztec bark,
Bleeding its sap through me,
Is this Spaniard to you?
(I know the difference)
Let me ask my blood:
Do you not see the fire in my eyes?
Don't you see the fire raining tears
Of embers onto paper,
Every word a burnt offering?
Maybe one does not know of my
Great grandfather in the valley
Of Mixcoatl, there he lived as the last
Nocturne, his great scar along his back,
The last of a warrior
Where he died among the stars of his fathers,
The scar from a knife, a knife that
Stole his true name!
Has Olin and Ehecatl taken it
With a breath of wind?
I will take the Sun Stone with you Octavio!
Take me home.....
And I can see it!
The noble people forgotten
As time forgets all,
My voice of the Warrior grateful
And speaking like a shiny tip of
Spear piercing the night wolf!
I am no longer a riddle in the water,
But a pure flow of immenseness,
A profound respected beast,
I feel the purity of ancient things,
I dissolve into memory's ink,
My combatant blood boils,
The land flames of my fire,
The people of the Sun!
My ancestral blood with calloused feet,
My ancient jungles,
Tamers of beasts,
Oh the Aztec Dream,
Yes, I am what my blood says I am,
What's in a name?
The identity misidentified.
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 11:22 AM UTC