"sustains" poems
I burnt down the metal cage
that confined me
I have broken up with God
and I am blossoming
without his hand pushing
my head down
I eat blackberries straight from
the bush
tasting the dirt where they grew
the tightest bud bursting
into fruit that nurtures me
that sustains me
I am Godless and cageless
I am a woman of
flames, starting fires
wherever I go
burning, burning, turning
into ash
into the very dirt I courted
with my purple stained
lips
Jan 21, 2017
Jan 21, 2017 at 9:56 AM UTC
Sabi
My Bosnian honey
The rarest of beauties
Truly an Unicorn amongst steeds
With fleet feet
My heart races towards you
Like a rag of mustangs
Wild and free
As you are
As you make me
Though I'm a world away
I can feel your heart beside me
Beating
Thunderously
Like hooves kissing open earth
If only in spirit
It alone sustains
Our kindered hearts
Amongst the world's stampede
With wise words you used to mend
My open wounds past sustained
My debt remains unpaid
Having little to my name
I declare my love
My commitment
My everything
As a token of my endearment
As an answer to your affection
My dearest Sabina
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 12:57 PM UTC
The moon laments in drones of silence
As tides raise-churning waves of violence
The mountains crest the surface of the sea
Now the earth is free to breathe
Can you see her now, oh Universe
Can you see your daughter giving birth
The formation of stars in her youthful eyes
She dreams of life that can never die
Primordial spirits, archaic stew
Volcanic rapture, lands of new
Frozen tundra of ancient ice
Her organic recipe sustains life
Eukaryotas thrive in a muck of wonder
Upon themselves they feed and plunder
Reptilian brain stems to limbic systems
Complex neocortex to indecision
Now she cries out to the universe
I am tired and now I am cursed
Still the moon tugs upon her tides
As we dance into eternal night...
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 24, 2018 at 9:35 AM UTC
(And Reasons Why I Have It Pretty Good)
2. Starving people in Africa who have nothing that even resembles a stable govermnent to keep them safe and fed and alive.
3. Couples going through divorce or recovering from divorce, and their poor children. =\
4. Drug addicts living on the streets without a family or a hope.
5. Women and children caught up in human trafficking and slavery who have no one to save them.
6. Would-be-mothers who cannot have children. This is heartbreaking for many women.
7. Children abused by their own parents who then have to go through foster care and withstand the constant reminder that they do not have parents that love and care for them.
8. People who have no hope and who believe a bottle of pills is the only way to take away their pain. Life is never a curse, and it is not one's responsibility to take when it becomes unbearable.
9. Fathers who can't find a job in our economy and who feel like a failure because they can't support their family's needs.
10. People who sit in a church and believe they are being good enough to go to heaven, when they've never heard the true gospel spoken to them before.
1. And most importantly...the great number of individuals who have not heard and those who have rejected the Good News of Jesus Christ. It's nothing that I have done that makes me any different than them, but only the grace of God that I took hold of. I won't stand by while my fellow man lives on less than I do every day. I am blessed with food, a better government than many in this world, and parents who love each other and the Lord. I have a life of hope that sustains me better than drugs, a life worth living, and the financial support that only God could supply. And I have a church that preaches the gospel each Sunday and reminds me of how much I need Him.
Lord, never let me forget Your many blessings. Self-pity, worry, and depression keep me from my true potential as Your daughter and servant. Show me how to share my blessings with others, so that I can spread Your Word to everyone I meet.
Amen.
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 12:26 AM UTC
New Zealand culture,
a fragility,
tainted by violence.
Colonisation.
Writers have examined,
the loss of Maori land.
Less common however,
is writing concerned with
the benefits,
accruing to white people
as a result of the acquisition
of this land.
Colonisation has provided,
Economic and social advantages,
to white people,
in contemporary New Zealand.
A hierarchy,
white Western culture,
sitting uncontested,
at its pinnacle.
The cultural capital that whiteness provides.
Unearned advantages at our disposal.
Live our lives with greater ease:
Homeownership.
Health.
Education.
The ‘Justice’ System.
Institutional privilege.
A political separation.
The white New Zealand system,
designed for whites.
To get through school,
have good health,
get jobs,
get a little justice.
If the system was designed,
for Maori people
it would not be the way it is now.
Overrepresentation of Maori,
in every
negative
New Zealand
social statistic.
The persistence of white power.
Society provides greater opportunities,
to white people,
by disadvantaging those who are not.
Unacknowledged,
debilitating, racism.
Being oblivious,
sustains a belief,
in white superiority.
While factors:
socioeconomic status, gender,
sexuality, disability,
may impact the degree to which,
individual white people,
can access privilege.
On some level,
every white person,
in New Zealand
benefits from their skin.
Jul 27, 2016
Jul 27, 2016 at 6:03 AM UTC
A life in poetry, A love in art
Set forth on a path that extends forever.
Though the closest reaches climb high
Over mountain and dale, through ravine and shadow,
The path goes on and as it does, descends into light:
So much light, more light than one can resolve.
It blurs the boundaries of the great valley
Splashes of green, the wonderful glare of richness
A river runs through the valley and nourishes the fruit
The sweetest fruit. It nourishes the body,
Nourishes the soul: renews, enriches, grows, sustains.
The path extends to the horizon. And beyond.
As it grows from the foothills it branches
Forming a fractal road of possibility.
Like roots growing from the mountain,
There appears nothing more natural in the world.
As the paths go on, they passes through diverse landscapes
Some places they make sharp changes in direction,
Some places they pass through further patches of shadow,
Some places they grow wider, Some places they get rocky,
But nowhere does the path narrow, beyond the first stretch,
Where the paths split, and over the mountains rejoin.
Beyond that there is always enough room for two
To walk astride.
Side by Side in Sunlight.
Hand in Hand.
For Maya.
Donald Guy
July 5, 2010.
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 2:37 AM UTC
for all the turbulence i sought
and sought
i was pretty good
i was so good
i battled through all the chaos
my kite was finally flying
but i snorted so much ritalin
my pupils are tar pits
and she calls me a hedonist but
i don't know what that means
i do know that
i fear neither death
nor consequence
you can treat me like your last meal
always at my most decadent
i remember i need to eat
then delete the thought
the only thing that sustains me is the rushing
by now
you should know that
it's all about me
we did the maths remember?
Oct 27, 2018
Oct 27, 2018 at 11:13 PM UTC
so i see now you're with someone else,
& finally now i'm free:
you left no excess residue
as you exit me.
i expected to express regrets
as your final vapors left my vents
but now your vacancy sustains me:
i have aptitude in lacking you
& your absence accents my best attributes
because i'm no longer attached to you.
& each step weighs a little less
sans you stealing half my breath,
& when i'm bathing in her flesh
she'll find comfort in my cleanliness,
& she can finally drown inside my depth
as i love her like there's nothing left.
Feb 7, 2010
Feb 7, 2010 at 7:56 PM UTC
God loves, sustains
and protects
all of His devotees
regardless of the
name chosen
to praise Him
inside my global prayer wheel
all the names of God
are humming
I am Allah, I am Jesus
I am Krishna, I am Buddha
I am Jehova, I am Jah,
I am Durga, I am Ahura Mazda
I am Quan Yin, I am Mother Mary,
I am Lakshmi, I am Shiva, I am Brahma
I am, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am....
...................You
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 9:16 PM UTC
Tepid damp and lukewarm night,
Build your camp by rivers bright;
Sable black and and somber grey,
Silt the river's arms away.
Island tenements rent for cheap,
Bakèd bricks in plinths lie deep;
Stores of merchants and their wives,
Sheltered from the thund'rous tides.
Glance on that maternal shrine,
Softly angled toward the Rhine;
See the men with flowing beards,
Seldom entertaining fears.
Moon illumes a stony pose,
Sun sustains a garden rose;
Temple pillars bathed in or,
Leave mute shadows on the floor.
Olifant horns begin to sound,
Tribesmen fall upon the town;
Riding with the northern gust,
Trampling the homes to dust.
Yet, as gateside rocks abound,
From the ashes, rises now,
Where that city met disgrace,
A mighty fortress in its place.
Jan 21, 2018
Jan 21, 2018 at 2:40 PM UTC
*Endearing is the moon tonight
and through its silver glow,
She whispers secrets of the things
that only she could know.
Of lover's trysts on summer nights
of kisses ‘neath her smile,
Of secret murmurs begging "friends"
to stay a little while.
Of sweet caresses cherished
in the fog of memories,
Of moonlit walks in arbors sweet
'neath swaying groves of trees,
Of shadows cast by clasping hands
of hearts that feel desire,
and unrequited love
that feels like death
from friendly fire.
Of promises in passion made,
with no chance to fulfill,
Of loneliness, of happiness,
of parting's bitter pill,
She whispers of the romance,
of the love that's hot and cold,
Like love that loses passion
but sustains us getting old.
She passes in the evening sky
and frolics with the stars,
And leaves this mortal on the porch
to mend life’s wounded scars.
Yet, never does she realize,
the secrets that she'd shared,
Are common knowledge
here on earth,
where love has all ensnared.*
Dec 4, 2017
Dec 4, 2017 at 12:17 AM UTC
Resilient
I settle with settling.
My thoughts, overlapping,
are details shrouded in clouds.
Images awaken and stir in themselves
the old and aging thoughts
raised like veins.
I pray for insolence, usually,
but sometimes I pray for
the weak to be free,
for strength in numbers.
I pray for the art of mind
over matter
over death.
I'll be free when
the rhythm is running again,
when I'm riding inside the rushes,
when the other worldly colors
let me fold them and squeeze.
I'm looking up but I'm looking down.
I drop.
I lose my sense of everything
but the friction
the fiction sustains the glides.
Jake Mahaffey
Copyright (c) 2013 Jacob Mahaffey
Jan 22, 2012
Jan 22, 2012 at 6:08 PM UTC
She wakes up with a shock, instantly feels the blood boil from her head down to her toes. Its the sound of that door.
The repetitive sound of that door slamming is a reminder of the poison in her life who seamlessly seeps into her heart continuing to infuse her mind with hate.
That door is used for a swinging entrance into her soul leaving it with touches of darkness until she simply can't understand how to love another person; how to empathize with another's time of distress. She loses touch, suffering to understand what love is.
The life who uses that door brought her into this world and smothers their existence with cold truths, lies, neglect, and stories of their past; inflicting damaging images and thoughts that cannot be unheard.
She's trying to persevere, but they persist to acknowledge their unreceptive response to her cry's for help, it destroys her light; leading her down the path where the poison starts to consume all her thoughts and distorts her rights to express herself with the constant feeling of never being heard.
You built darkness in her and every layer affects even the smallest of challenges in life but you left her with a flame of curiosity to understand what others could not even care to comprehend; she sustains her curiosity for life.
Mar 15, 2019
Mar 15, 2019 at 6:39 PM UTC
In the depths of silence, where shadows reside,
A heavy heart, burdened, cannot hide.
Unseen, unnoticed, like a ghostly wraith,
I wander through existence, lost in a desolate faith.
In a crowded room, I fade to gray,
Whispers and laughter, they all drift away.
An outsider peering through misty eyes,
Yearning for connection, but met with empty skies.
Words unspoken, like echoes unheard,
Emotions trapped, stifled, never stirred.
My voice, a mere whisper in the wind,
Aching to be heard, to matter, to rescind.
The world moves on, an unforgiving tide,
Leaving me stranded, unwanted, denied.
Invisible threads bind me, a lonely refrain,
Longing for affection, like a wilted flower in the rain.
I seek solace in dreams, a sanctuary of the mind,
Where I am cherished, accepted, intertwined.
But awakening brings me back to the bitter truth,
That I am but a shadow, lost in the uncaring sleuth.
Yet amidst the darkness, a flicker remains,
A glimmer of hope, a spark that sustains.
For within this void, a strength starts to ignite,
Embracing my worth, pushing through the night.
Though I may feel ignored, unwanted, unseen,
I'll rise above the shadows, where dreams intervene.
For in this vast universe, I'll find my own way,
To shine brightly, even if skies remain gray.
Jun 3, 2023
Jun 3, 2023 at 1:10 PM UTC
There is a love that goes beyond passion. Beyond desire.
A love that is felt within the very fiber of the soul.
One with ardent, inexorable devotion.
A love of imperceptible depth, and intense adoration.
There is a love as unyielding in its fervency,
As it is in its sanctity.
A love that is immutable, and enduring.
There is a love that sustains and validates one's existence.
A love that is uncompromising in it's absolutness.
There is a love that leads one to their destiny.
One that is incomprehensible. Without concession.
A love that holds the heart in passionate seduction.
There is a love that is timeless and unending.
A love that is unyielding in it's conviction.
There is a love with irreducible and fierce conviction.
A love with immeasurable compassion.
And that love, is the love I hold for you.
Nov 9, 2012
Nov 9, 2012 at 5:06 PM UTC
I am alive
I am still
I am patient
I feel, and listen, and hear
But I sing of neither joy nor sorrow
I simply stand long upon this ground
My voice is the unspoken sound
In my leaves I hold many smiles
I am the web of life
The web that sustains us
Nurture me and I will hold my strong branches high
I will shade the lovers
I will lift the swinging children toward the sky
I will breath my life into your life
For I am you and you are me
Let us give comfort to each other
And burry our entwined roots
Deep into the living earth
Mar 16, 2013
Mar 16, 2013 at 6:22 PM UTC
The infinity of lights made her feel infinite
Safe
Like all the light would drive out the dark in this glowing city
One
She was as vast as the vast city around her
New York
Chicago
Seattle
all
or
None of the above
Dream World
Safe
Safe enough to jump
Not really to jump
Maybe more to fly
The fear did not affect her action
In her hazy dream world city
She could fly she thought
She places her feet on the slippery unforgiving iron
Stepping Up
Looking Down
The fear was still not there
This was not a suicidal act
She wanted to jump
Not so much to jump as to fly
King of this concrete jungle
The ***** of the heart
The pulse of the hand
The breathlessness
The final step
Shes soaring now
Shes falling now
flying:soaring:floating
falling:flailing:breaking
you won't break yourself if you believe you can't
There's the confliction
The child that believes she can fly
The grown girl who lays broken to die
Her body is broken like a cartoon
Like Wile E cayote after falling off some boulder
There was a whole body
There was not
blood
guts
or reality
Hazy dreamworld city
In this flowing capital she beams with a twisted sense of perseverance
She sustains no injuries
Like tripping on those uneven breaks of pavement
They say you're never supposed to sleep through the falls in the falling dreams
The pit of the stomach
Winded
Clammy
Punched in the stomach
Falling Dreams
Yet she did
Why was the fear not there?
It was not in her sleep cycle
not on top of the skyscraper in hazy dreamworld city
She saw her broken body rise to life
Why could she sleep through the fall?
And the next sky scraper she fell from
...Not in hazy dreamworld city
...Would she walk away?
Was she jumping from the money that built that skyscraper?
Or the classic Freudian symbol, dream specialists might contend
Translation of one image onto another
So I was jumping away from men
Commitment
What's new?
Spend money and time
Loose friends and crime
Jumping away from reality
Soaring now
Falling now
Falling into the flowing light of the hazy dreamworld city
As flies will always return to fluorescent light bulbs, naive
Like if she got close enough to it
She would become it
She would consume it
The light would consume her
Illuminated
The dark expelled to the smallest corners of this earth
flying in this hazy dreamworld city.
Jun 24, 2012
Jun 24, 2012 at 7:16 PM UTC
complexity
is your beauty
simplicity
your mystery
interdependence
sustains you
once upon a time
we dipped bowls
into your waters
and brought up
draughts of life
now
Skipjacks go
fathoms deep
into endless
depletion
charting
entangled
dead zones
broadening
into a sea of
inertness
your delicate
eco-essence tips
toward oblivion
effluvia farmers
layer mechanized
blankets of
nitrates on your
sunset shores
weaving
green tendrils
of algae blooms
strangling the
entanglements
of all links in
your miraculous
food chain
the EPA
proscribes
a Jenny Craig
pollution diet
to halt the
slaughter in
oxygen
challenged
dead zones
where rockfish
are garroted,
oysters get drilled
by screwworms
and azure tinted
soft shell *****
dance soft
shoe taps
lifting a tinny
chorus of sad
Piedmont Blues
the flat-lining
watersheds
voiceless
warnings
tremble
rocking the
purged nests of
screaming ospreys
in vocal protest
of a sinking
Tangier Isle
anointing it’s
tombstones
of unvisited
cemeteries with
multicolored
guano
fitting
alkaline
tributes
to the lost
inhabitants
and forgotten
languages
sinking into the
brine of gray
brackish tides
Delmarva’s fine
intra-continental
balance skewed
by the oozing
industrial swill
of Frank Perdue
chicken farms
ruling the roost of
sanctioned sustainability
tinging clear watersheds
of finger lakes
set in splints to
repair dislocations
and complex
compound fractures
that may never heal
again
Music Selection:
Taj Mahal: Fishin Blues
jbm
Oakland
6/7/12
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 8:36 AM UTC
The mind
when immersed in memories
of yesterday carried by
hopes of tomorrows
and thoughts that like stones
on the surface of a lake
skip from feeling to heart
tracing ripples of emotions
as from nature's beauty
to the smallness of self
is a universal totality
brushing wind over water
to wave onto shore
a life that lost on Earth
helps grow the next wave
that reaches beyond
into the horizon
where some go to sleep
while others wake
are born or take last breath
to be born again
matters not if the sun shines
or the moon reflects on its surface
glass only gives back
the reality of what is
not what one wants
the universal blanket
over and under
above and below
into time on end
not wavering not changing
to accommodate humanity
sustains eternity
what was and what will be
wishing to be more
is as a mere leaf that falls
over an oak seed on its bank
majestic in the passing
before and after us
is where we take part
of forever
Marta
06/01/2017
Jun 4, 2017
Jun 4, 2017 at 3:56 PM UTC
I sing sweet whispers of affection
Offer only the best to catch your attention
I ask you, oh radiant goddess of Olympus
May I humbly be the one you choose
For eons your heart suffered
Your trust tampled and discarded
Your coveted love easily forgotten
Leaving you in pain, down and broken
Oh goddess, queen of Olympia
Shine your light towards me
Look at my growing affections, I pray
Embrace my devotion, and the words I say
I don't want to be the Zeus you loathe
Nor the offered champions who eventually leave you
Instead I simply am a mortal admirer
Enamoured by you, my eyes only seeking you
I don't want to be the one who hurts you
I simply want to devote myself completely to you
So I pray for a future that you will see me
As I have chosen to seek the world just for you
Oh Hera, beautiful yet broken soul
I promise you a lifetime of Love
Just to give you smiles everyday
And to be your pillar and strength
In my simplest mortal words, I love you
Regardless of your flaws and your iniquities
In my simplest mortal ways, I'll love you
Through all the ages, no matter what stands in our way
So please, Let me choose to stay
Because your mere presence is my heaven
Your embrace my sturdy, protective walls
Your kisses the nectar and ambrosia that sustains me
Oh Hera, goddess of my affections
Please see me as where you fit
I'll stay here until you're ready to choose
Because in all this chaos, I vow to treasure you
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019 at 1:23 AM UTC
it was the moon that fell through. a lump of gray astronaut
pale acne-blasted, an orphan of the dome, floating in a pond
face down; gasping... green brass minnows surge through diatoms
that have no word for moon; a legion of blind unicorn gall stones -
invisible to naked eyes; uncountable geometries horde the dark waters
they cannot disprove or disobey. large mouth bass inhale calcium polygons
they have never met; that have no word for large mouth bass -
that hasn't always been unknown as september is meaningless
now, even more so, the meaning is less,
without the moon... so
the last tide is false. a satellite has lost it's grip and displaced a placid
jewel of ice cold pause. in the backwoods of these. words. a. moon.
is. breathing. in. a. void. teeming. with. ancient. life.
it is a void, unfamiliar to a native of heaven. this void used to rise and fall
in obedience to the wax and wane. in accord with her orbit.
but now it burns the ocean of serenity with irony's forge.
pounding the stainless steel of unfathomable loss;
even the dross sustains a shape of things to come undone -
when the hammer falls and the blacksmith is a poet
born to ****** fables from mayflies. a natural.
the hammer was in the hand before the moon gained
a face or an ocean to adore it. it was there,
ticking like a season, burgeoning with locusts -
holding off the mob; the moon was long ago, slipping off the roof -
long before firemen met lightning.
the tide was a pious fool.
the measure was not the span of the impending verse, but the hour of it's
callous beauty, assembled. a lunacy, stripped of all moons.
and only the sun remaining -
to behold the uncanny descent of a faithful, vestigial goddess.
a yellow throne. a yellow eye. and the sun's first chill...
as wave after wave of syllables sum succulent sorrows -
savoring sacred symmetries, asymmetrically... summoning -
super luminary strawberry switchblades,
saving sanity for questions with question marks.
this poem fell through. a lung collapsed or not.
and the moon is at the bottom of my heart.
Oct 17, 2012
Oct 17, 2012 at 11:17 AM UTC
*Ignorance is bliss they say
There are many who might agree
But I have a secret to share today
That once was shared with me
If you should ever chance to gaze into the eyes of the young and bold
You might discern a glowing light that neither flickers nor grows cold
What sustains this constant spark-
Night or day, light or dark?
Whence flows the river of joy and peace
That gushes forth through gentle souls?
What is the secret of peaceful sleep
Enjoyed by minds of simpler mould?
Tempting though it may be to attribute to lacking wit
The exuberance and ecstasy discarded with the training bit,
Wisdom urges a second glance
beyond the proverbial looking glass
In the hope one might contrive
to visit with the other side
A world of simple charms and grace,
far from this one’s treacherous maze
And so this deeper, delving look
Might relight that failing spark
While in the pages of a thousand books
One may languish in the dark!*
Sep 2, 2015
Sep 2, 2015 at 6:49 PM UTC
A Crop of Lies irrigate farmland
Deception grows and dies
Its corpse sustains
A cycle refrains
Cold, this night is
Cracks open the ground
Revealing a sight
Seeping through with light
Regions were found
To be taken and conquered
Sailors sailed to eat sailors
And they as well ate bread
Sounds of paranormal had
Guided every boat, then plane
Then spaceship, to the inside
Of a toy box they made
“These Crops dictate Truth”
Says Man (or monster)
Every night is cold; cracked
These Crops are impure
Livestock tell stories of their leader
It’s more of saying really
Because they’re ******* livestock
The Truth cannot tell nor talk
Reason slips off their skin
Like water off oil
Harder and harder it is
For Man to let joy soak in
Journeys of discovery
Travel through the television
Crisps, colas, pies, and cakes
Is what ******* does it
Beef pulp, French toast, tomato paste
Is what ******* does it
All we consume is ****
Crying fat morons decompose
“I really like the rain”
Says ****** with pudding stain
And her body melts and pours
As the rain does inexcusably
Great big dogs soak up in the rain
Unlike Man with his walking cane
They are all dying as they retreat
Underneath a roof of sin to replace
Emotional politicians claim they’re drug-free
As they smoke cigs and drink alcohol
Infant babies were torn apart in shopping malls
Did the World set them free?
Man (or monster) propose
To have a war on anything
Must any more children die?
Or can they get high; watch television?
What the **** is wrong with an aspect
Of harmless self-discovery
Can Man wager livestock’s epiphany?
Is it o.k. to live in a subdivision?
Or on a farm, or in the television?
Do these Crops have to dictate
Which victim we choose to mate?
To dictate our truth?
Can the fake astronaut admit?
He got ******* high; watched sitcoms
Ate potato chips, ate cereal out of the box
Never told a soul it was a hoax
Crops soak in the sweet rain
As the political Man weeps
These Crops become true
Dying Men no longer retreat
A Crop of Lies
Become so true
This wisdom is beauty
What we see now
Is as clear as day
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 2:25 PM UTC