"sulphurous" poems
who is this
husky?
shedding luck and fur
down by the horizon.
town tips in snow
& breathy-fog.
the mountain tips and prays
on bowed-knee,
to daughters in pursuit of happiness,
& trees.
she’s out there looking for the best in mother
madness.
a horse’s bangs, sprung
moon to ridge
to purpling autumn-seared fields four days lit.
this ease into living,
carousel,
carnival of lights
& love.
the rolling of a family unit.
the sound and punched beauty of it.
like when we were birds, or kids, or
humming the sun
strummed hills.
[ catch a dream. ]
open your little eyes, bear cub.
see small pools of sulphurous heat
& repeat,
let go the smoke to breathe.
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 12:14 AM UTC
[Dedicated to Austin Osman Spare]
Have pity ! show no pity !
Those eyes that send such shivers
Into my brain and spine : oh let them
Flame like the ancient city
Swallowed up by the sulphurous rivers
When men let angels fret them !
Yea ! let the south wind blow,
And the Turkish banner advance,
And the word go out : No quarter !
But I shall hod thee -so !
While the boys and maidens dance
About the shambles of slaughter !
I know thee who thou art,
The inmost fiend that curlest
Thy vampire tounge about
Earth's corybantic heart,
Hell's warrior that whirlest
The darts of horror and doubt !
Thou knowest me who I am
The inmost soul and saviour
Of man ; what hieroglyph
Of the dragon and the lamb
Shall thou and I engrave here
On Time's inscandescable cliff ?
Look ! in the plished granite,
Black as thy cartouche is with sins,
I read the searing sentence
That blasts the eyes that scan it :
**** and SET be TWINS."
A fico for repentance !
Ay ! O Son of my mother
That snarled and clawed in her womb
As now we rave in our rapture,
I know thee, I love thee, brother !
Incestuous males that consumes
The light and the life that we capture.
Starve thou the soul of the world,
Brother, as I the body !
Shall we not glut our lust
On these wretches whom Fate hath hurled
To a hell of jesus and shoddy,
Dung and ethics and dust ?
Thou as I art Fate.
Coe then, conquer and kiss me !
Come ! what hinders? Believe me :
This is the thought we await.
The mark is fair ; can you miss me ?
See, how subtly I writhe !
Strange runes and unknown sigils
I trace in the trance that thrills us.
Death ! how lithe, how blithe
Are these male incestuous vigils !
Ah ! this is the spasm that kills us !
Wherefore I solemnly affirm
This twofold Oneness at the term.
Asar on Asi did beget
Horus twin brother unto Set.
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth from the dusk ; then nature slain
Lets the Beyond be born again.
This weird is of the tongue of Khem,
The Conjuration used of them.
Whoso shall speak it, let him die,
His bowels rotting inwardly,
Save he uncover and caress
The God that lighteth his liesse.
6k
Sun swollen
reddening as it sank
that brutal ****** disc
scored by church steeples
and chimney stacks
almost lost in the drifting haze
of sulphurous yellow
and char-black smoke.
Duck boards dip
into the sodden earth
as men ***** along in conga lines
holding tight the pack of the man
in front, lest they should slip
lose quick their footing
be ****** down and smothered
by mud.
The walls of the tunnels
are packed earth
rich with blood and bone
bits and pieces of human
anatomy dangle and hang
as if posed by an artist
with a strange and cruel eye
for detail.
The scrabble for fox holes
and rough scraped ditches,
anywhere, below the line of fire.
The ting and whiz-bang
of a night of action
The whistle, the dash
and the forward push
counted more in men
than metres.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 12:28 PM UTC
It was on Hallowe'en when we said we'd meet;
as we thought it might be romantically spooky;
and I trotted gaily along the pathway
through the dimly-lit park
where the predator gay *** maniacs roamed
hoping for a bit of backdoor action
and my excited little heart went
"YI YI YI YI YI YAAAAARRRGGGHHH!"
with eager anticipation
of a hot new nymphomaniac date.
We had been a-texting with
ever-increasing frankness
for several weeks and I was beginning
to get tired of wiping the keyboard clean
after each bout of frenzied
manual self-stimulation
which she had boldly urged me to
and the built-in camera was out of order
because of the damp ***** build-up.
I found the pictures she sent me
stimulating to say the very least
especially the one with the melon
peeping out from between her legs
and I found her blood-red eyes
rather exciting really
once I got used to them;
and I was quite looking forward
to the love bites she promised me
which was why I had washed my neck
with particular attention to the blackheads.
Promptly at the stroke of midnight
my putative mistress arrived
with a ******* great clap of thunder
and to say I was surprised by her sulphurous breath
would be putting it mildly
and the fifty-five inch waist
was a bit of a disappointment,
and I honestly and truly think
she might have mentioned
the suppurating scabs
and oozing boils
or at least hinted at them.
As I fought the ravening hell-bitch off
with the hatchet I had wisely brought
in my briefcase as a safety precaution
once more I rued my innocence:
how many times have I been let down
after such high hopes from internet dating
and yet - trusting soul that I am -
I had again let my heart go astray.
Once it was all over
and I gazed down at her hideous
and mutilated corpse bleeding
and twitching on the ****** bitumen,
I lifted up her skirt
just to check the melon photo
hadn't been a fake;
and although there was no large
piece of fruit in situ at the time
I could see it had always
been a very real possibility.
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 12:22 PM UTC
The grief that broods in your soul
gushes as a fiery deluge
drowning you
in the flames of a sulphurous agony.
Between the layers of consciousness,
like a brutal cleaver,
it tears up the umbilical cord
that knots you up with your life's script.
On the wings of a melancholic sigh,
you glide to a land of psychedelic dreams
where the hypnotic beat of conga drums
carry you to a world
beyond the dreary beats
of a mundane chore.
The ecstasy of your steps
creates a mystical rhythm
for your Galala dance!
Even the shadow of your dreams
has a sapphire blue
woven into its consciousness!
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 11:29 AM UTC
The fog shall not lift...sapphire, ruby,
emerald studded chimeras roam the
primordial soup.
The hysterical triad of a bleating goat,
lion's roar, dragon's inflamed screech.
The implacable lot of sublime vision...
reels the shadow of a halo.
The shadow of what's opaque...an
ominous drumbeat of the collective
unconscious.
Pagan hybrid...chimera--sulphurous
manacle of delirium, pomp and glory
of madness.
Releasing opiates within the plush
chambers of your Gaian skull.
Lunar stone's throw to quashing tides...
bone-fetching chimeras 'neath their
moonlit charge at flesh.
Chimeras, no mere inhabitants of an
exotic petting zoo...pattering the early
puddles which became The Face of the
Deep.
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 10:52 AM UTC
I wish for your glorious garden to wither,
your tree to shudder and fall in the forest.
Your stars to hang limp upon the heavens,
and your moon to turn to a sulphurous pond!
I wish for your humour to sour in your mouth!
And your thoughts to dwell in incoherent confusion,
your keen logic to become a pile of rubble,
and for happiness to elude you constantly.
Jan 2, 2015
Jan 2, 2015 at 1:56 PM UTC
I learned about Oxalic Acid
At seventeen
When less than anxious for yet more information
More notes on a chalkboard
In a malodorous Sulphurous school room.
Hastily copied in pencil
Scribbled then and required to be transformed
Later, into copperplate, almost textbook pages.
To be judged as adequate; or not.
Oxalic Acid; not as deadly.
But in a close league,
To the clear deadly liquids
Held in the dusty skull marked bottles
Within easy reach of any manic schoolboy.
Dusty bottles in a rack
In a rack on a bench
On a bench where I sat
Where I sat wondering why my mind
My sharp juvenile mind would never grasp
Molecular Valence Theory quite as well
As the taste of a girls lips
The smell of her hair
The ring of her laugh
The answer to a question in her eyes.
Years later
When that girl had gone
I read that Oxalic Acid is found in Rhubarb leaves.
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 28, 2014 at 4:39 PM UTC
A man stands. overlooking two different visions. Two different choices.
On the left he gazed over the glorious modernized utopia. Tall prominent skyscrapers, gleaming in the dazzling pure sunlight. Clinical white rows of spacious suburbia. Unnaturally green gardens of perfectly shaped, perfectly cut square grass accompanying the houses. Polished, scentless people strolled down the un-littered perfection of the linear streets. Enormous great smiles featured on the faces of all. The urban paradise. Biblical, eden in practise, sanctity. Economical bliss. Unpolluted, crime free, social perfection. No inequality, racism, no hatred only love among broters. No depression. The endless rows stretched glorious miles, convenience, supermarkets, brand new glistening, hospitals, all necessity in perfect working order. No unemployment, no political unrest. Every man among equals. Utopia.
On the right hand side, wretched poverty as far as the eye can see. Cramped, overwhelmed shanty towns. Terrified people, dragging themselves through diseased streets. Crippling illness plaguing the antagonized masses. There is no employment here, no glistening new buildings. Only the decaying festering ruins of lifetimes of selfishness. Hatred, jealousy, paranoia, neurotic fluttering harpy’s, harlequins of the night. Plagued minds, plagued bodies. Gargantuan monsters of men rose from the rubble. Demented. Lava flows freely through the crumbling streets. There are no trees here, no vegetation, only blackened earth. Blackened with the ****** despair of man. Only anguish in this land. The black sun burns with hateful rage in the sooty, cloudy toxic sky, the only rain falls as corpses falling from sardine cans to the sky. Burnt out cancerous lungs, filled with sulphurous air from the giant volcano's of dead minds, spewing deadly chemicals into the already uninhabitable environment. The demons of despair stalk this land, endlessly wallowing in there own self-loathing, amongst other vile things.
The decision resting on his shoulders governs life for all men, all men to come. His left side, yearning for paradise, freedom, equality for all, peace, communal gain.
His right side leaning towards narcissistic self gain. Taking the world for himself, watching alone the setting of the poisoned blck sun, poisoned by his greed.
He walked forward, leaving the realms of choice behind him. The future was his to choose.
Apr 10, 2012
Apr 10, 2012 at 4:45 PM UTC
Old courtyards with tubs of laundry:
‘Go to the washerwoman and do your own washing’
I whisper to you, and the wild apricot trees
all turn suddenly white, the sky pales,
the world is ****** in a drenching buzz.
There΄s a smell of bluebags and a sulphurous bubbling.
You΄d hardly believe it — so much steam rises
that only dirt is left in the copper.
The wild apricots petrify into coral.
It΄s so easy — easy in a woman΄s way —
to wash your soul, to rejoice in the spring wind
shaking the scales on its dragon-tail
so that you΄re looking at soap-bubbles
it blows for you between your fingers.
Two children pass by, holding on a string
a balloon transparent as a bubble.
For a moment we are crouched inside it.
Grete Tartler
[Translated into English by Fleur Adcock]
New Europe Writers Bucharest Tales, Contemporary Literature Press, Bucharest, 2014
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 11:47 AM UTC
A pulsating longevity awaits in the longing hours.
Tick.
Tick.
A sulphurous coverlet crawls up to my neck.
Tick.
Tick.
It’s dark at the windows; it claws at my throat.
Tick.
Tick.
Someone, come save me – I can’t breathe; I can’t cope.
The layers peel back, constellations on show –
I sit with this pain while it grabs its dark coat
On closer perusal, a face lingers close
Broken, ugly, no joy does it show
It takes my limp hand in a gentle caress – calloused, hardened, its gaze set on my chest
“Dear girl”, it does say, as the tears linger close, “your being in this world hasn’t quite found its home”
I grasp at this hand I don’t quite understand – it coaxes me forward in a promising demand.
“Make friends with this darkness – feel how it chokes. It has a message to share underneath its black cloak”
Trepid, shaken, I follow its lead
The cracks shatter open and all is revealed.
Oct 14, 2022
Oct 14, 2022 at 5:19 PM UTC
Lightning
with fiery shades of wrath
woven into its shards
ripped the horizon,
dived into the ocean
to its depths of sedimented pretensions,
baptised it with drops of sulphurous fire,
to a cleansed conscience.
The ocean rose up in a high tide of exuberance,
escorted me to its depths
for the drop of sulphurous fire to baptise me,
to give my yearnings the shape of a flame
that puts my soul on fire.
Sep 18, 2018
Sep 18, 2018 at 4:20 AM UTC
In a nonchalant nook of a meadow and brook
There's a spot where the rules don't apply
It's not easy to find in the rushes enshrined
And you'd have to be ever so spry
It's here, cast aside, that the fairy folk hide
The ones Disney politely declined
Though they twinkle and fly through the midsummer sky
Their employment was less than refined
There's a stout looking sprite in a shimmer of light
With the buzz like a million sighs
Her name sent a shiver straight over you liver
It's Shitwallop, bringer of flies
There's a couple of wimpish and creepy wee imps
Pale yellow, like ageing canaries
It's Wagglebrow-Kisses and Gropetit-Dismisses
The ****** Harassment Fairies
And floating around with a raspberry sound
Leaving sulphurous fumes as she goes
Like a starfish but hairy, the Flatulence Fairy
Queen ********** drifts up your nose
There's so little to write of the Soddomy sprite
That I won't even mention his name
Dodge Flapcrack and Slurpees the Harpies of Herpies
And avoid any friends of the same
If you want my advice, which will have to suffice
Then I'd stay well away altogether
For I've not even touched on the ******* and such
And a fairy looks scary in leather
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 6:28 PM UTC
At times the soul gets clenched
in an unspeakable grief
In a demoniac grip, it chokes and wriggles
The pain of being stung by a dozen scorpions
or hacked piece by piece by an axe
Tremulous grows the heart, over love that is spent
Seeks in vain to revive the joy that is gone
Strains to lift up the veil that darkens the soul
Wrestles to come out from the desolate cave of black solitude
The more it struggles to wade through the mess
the deeper it plunges into the morass of despair
Clung on talons of excruciating pain,
wailing a long wail of never being understood
the mind goes berserk
whirling and churning.
Anytime the volcano might erupt
emitting fumes of sulphurous smoke
with asphalt lava, spilling out,
blowing life with its violent breath.
Aug 28, 2017
Aug 28, 2017 at 9:57 AM UTC
Existence is like colours and emotions mixed together
Sometimes my existence feels like a raging sulphurous flame of intense red and sometimes it feels empty yet deep like the melancholic blue ocean
Whatever my existence embodies, I want it to represent the rainbow, for the rainbow adds colours to people’s life.
But most of the time I feel that I don’t even exist and that I am absent in this world.
My existence feels black, also known as the absence of colour.
Mar 25, 2018
Mar 25, 2018 at 12:20 AM UTC
curled up compact
as shockwaves of pain
twist daggers up my sides
doubling over metallic tang
as i coughed up rust
breaking, breaking
coiled within and writhing
as the shock slithers into aches
breaking apart in sulphurous acid
tearing holes in my viscera
as i'm blistered and vitriolic
hurting, hurting
contorted inhumanely
as the irascible aftershocks
flowed magma on my insides
burning me internally
as i waited for it to be over
dying, dying.
Mar 9, 2018
Mar 9, 2018 at 1:58 PM UTC
You have a citric tongue
Acidic but tasty
You are a vacation
In mental ************
Sulphurous words
That burn me
Full of furious reactions
Such an oceanic passion
A deep blue sea
Of eyes that look into me
Your body is a nation
Barely opened borders
I flow into you
Heart heavy and tired
Poetic soul branded illegal
Desire makes me criminal
Wanting those wanton lips
Chapped from our heated kiss
Make me your facebook friend
To share your soul
In the form of digital content
Then bury me in cement
Solidifying your foundation
Building us up from lust
And a cosmic elation
With a milky way
***********
Till both of us
Return fully reformed
From the ravishing rains
Of that ****** storm
Dec 25, 2015
Dec 25, 2015 at 4:06 PM UTC
Through the fragile looking glass,
Sealed edges, air tight?
Watching dragons as they pass.
Envisaging witches,
Stuck behind glass.
They're standing round copper tone cauldrons
All full up with steam.
The noise is peculiar.
The roaring of dragons too close at hand.
The cauldrons bubble.
The witches whisper.
The dragons wail.
The dragon upon his back sports a sail.
Tries to break through the glass with his mightiest tail.
The dragon had made it
Fantasy left behind the mirrors border.
Accompanied by forward marching bearded dwarves and folk of elven kind.
Pursued by orcs with knives and forks.
With disgusting faces.
And empty bellies.
The dragons, they turned, with sulphurous breath, chased away orcs with one mighty blast.
Back through the mirror the ugly orcs fled.
Straight into the witches cauldron.
Not dead.
The potions the witches were brewing, today ,contained ingredients to chase scary away
Ugly creatures, converted,beautiful.
The rest of the *** contents made into soup.
Making ugly creatures lovely.
Ever seen a pretty Orc?
You'll know where he's been if you ever do!
(c)Livvi
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 1:28 PM UTC
As I lose my soul in a song, yet again
In the lyrical verses of Death, I start my bargain
Death, The Eternal Watcher, ***** in my being
Through the endless pitch black night, that voided me, from seeing
The light that all my prayers I offered went straight to
My soul now drenched in the moist from the grisly beats and tempos
From the void, I stride, I yield, I unsheathed
The power of my Deed-Blade, to prove I was worthy
To face off with the Devil, who yielded no mercy
As the Devil threw his summons of sulphurous fire
A baneful blow to his head, knocked him out in his lair of mire
O, Death, as I stand before the Devil’s cadaver
Sing to me the verses of Eternity’s Master
May He bless my soul that lived for a transient time
May it find the path of virtue as it fought out of intrepidness, not of bravado
May my soul finally see the light
The light of God that would bring me in spiritual ecstasy, with this, I have truly won the fight
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 9:29 AM UTC
Pathetically distant from the human race
Too frightened to offer a warm embrace
I skulk in the shadows waiting to pounce
errrm..
Thrusting my little insults in the hope of a scream
A SCREAM
A SCREAM **** you all, SCREAM!
Fill this void in my life with a terrified SCREAM...
Oh, what have I become?
Feeding off negativity is my only sun.
I,
I am but nothing but a sulphurous odour
warm sorbet or a gas-less soda
I NEED you to SCREAM
Please...
Don't you dare stay silent
I am nothing without your kicking and clawing
I would be dead already if you had been ignoring
SCREAM and leak your salty tears
Pretend that I am your worst fears
Feed me with venom
Oh how I'll dine
before
"POETRY ART MASTERPIECE FINE"
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 11:13 AM UTC
It was the missing decade
of my life that came back,
late on one clammy night.
Wearing your visage
of a foraging girl
at the foot of a tranquil Vesuvius.
Spent though I was,
for those decades still with me,
I sat awake listening to the warmth of open windows.
The decade came for me,
in figments and memories
wheezing a few questions.
This room is known to me,
as is the night,
as is the flaying heat,
and the carved words
on the creaking charpoi
by some distant uncle.
I melded with the light squeezing through
into this dark, sulphurous room
like an exile away from my maker.
The decade came to me
and sang lullabies
of princes who never were.
I have kept my vigil
until the mirror ran dry
and returned to sand.
The decade wears me now
as I am, the hunting boy
by a shimmering Ganges.
May 6, 2017
May 6, 2017 at 6:22 PM UTC
He bursts in through the door
Most would have opened it first
But they're all the same
These radical fundamentalists
Standing alone and angry
Like blistered thumbs
Each sulphurous quotation
Boomed with idiotic solemnity
And such slobbering enthusiasm
Such glassy eyed acceptance
For every steaming edict
He insistently invades you
Because he needs to persuade you
And he longs so much to save you
Poking prodding and nagging
Pulpit punching and finger wagging
'Till your will to live is sagging
"I know and you don't !
I'm right and you're wrong !
You have to listen to me !
I am the man with a plan !
When others can't, I can ! "
So, I ponder this man with interest
His certainty speaks loud and clear
It speaks of making dreams reality
And delusional hopes that really can be
But most of all it speaks to me
Of an utter pile of ****
By Phil Roberts
Dec 31, 2015
Dec 31, 2015 at 7:20 AM UTC
He bursts in through the door
Most would have opened it first
But they're all the same
These radical fundamentalists
Standing alone and angry
Like blistered thumbs
Each sulphurous quotation
Boomed with idiotic solemnity
And such slobbering enthusiasm
Such glassy eyed acceptance
For every steaming edict
He insistently invades you
Because he needs to persuade you
And he longs so much to save you
Poking prodding and nagging
Pulpit punching and finger wagging
'Till your will to live is sagging
"I know and you don't !
I'm right and you're wrong !
You have to listen to me !
I am the man with a plan !
When others can't, I can ! "
So, I ponder this man with interest
His certainty speaks loud and clear
It speaks of making dreams reality
And delusional hopes that really can be
But most of all it speaks to me
Of an utter pile of ****
By Phil Roberts
Jul 15, 2015
Jul 15, 2015 at 1:09 PM UTC
The fire and brimstone in their pall
Are the cloak and cloth of sin
Whose tyranny the mind appal
When it fathoms deep within
And o'er those gates so rancid wrought
With blood and flesh and iron
When after that fate one, we, hath fought
We turn up still, all hope be gone
The stench of death dank, all around
Suffuse the climes from sky to ground
The King of Hell who seldom grafts
For anything, yet seldom stops
His command to torture, down the shaft
As to every level hops
Spreads black wings and glides above
His victims as he, gruesome, gloats
Anathema to turtle dove
Who on divine zephyr of heaven floats
His presence ever torturous still
When reign dark from ****** lordly hill
He sees the scuttling victims run
Away, cruel let loose for game and chase
A beautiful mirage of sun
To taunt the soul abased
Hells hills trees grow putrid leaves
No mortal could brace the sulphurous stench
Under canopies the victim weave
As they shiver, shudder, blench
As torturer catches up, apace
Him testament to time's disgrace
By his vainglory employed
That ******* of the angel boys
Treats people, world, as things and toy
Seduced to do his bidding, ploys
But justice, freedom will uproar
Angels of Hell link arms, uprise
For Heaven they have wanted more
Than sooty, oppressive, obsidian skies
**** the devil, his ****** lies
Hear us rise, sing God's reprise
Mar 16, 2018
Mar 16, 2018 at 11:48 AM UTC