"swaddled" poems
If I was a mountain
That soared towards the sky,
With craggy snow caps
And stormy grey eyes-
Then you'd be the clouds
That swaddled my peak,
That silenced my thunder
When I tried to speak.
If I was the earth
The desert, in fact:
With arid dry soil
And mud, baked and cracked-
You'd be the rain
The downpour that soothed;
The balm to my bruises,
Relief to my wounds.
If I was the Moon
In the indigo night,
With stars as my blanket
And silver; my light-
Well you'd be the Sun
Just always behind
That lent me your glow
And caused me to shine.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 12:39 AM UTC
I write my identity in gluestick and markers
I am a lamb raised by wolves
swaddled pulsing cosmos girl-child
My limbs are rebuilt like a 7 year old birdhouse
with garish colours and bubbling pride
I am pouring glitter onto my future
the kaleidoscope cannot exist inside
In the end I think there would be
no nobler cause than to
have a life worthy of taping on
the refrigerator that I can
swell with ever-young joy to know I
have created with
trial and forgiveness.
Jul 10, 2012
Jul 10, 2012 at 2:26 PM UTC
Someday I'd like to wander free
like butterfly, like bumblebee,
perhaps to plant a willow tree
beside the silent solemn sea,
before these things exist no more,
from mountain top to shifting shore,
when, soon, bald eagles cease to soar
and build their aeries nevermore,
and fish forsake polluted streams
(where sulfur swims and typhoid teems
since no one really cares it seems)
to die inside our toxic dreams
while ice caps melt and winter steams,
and all the air surrounding reeks
as children choke, for no one speaks
of fracking wells or oily leaks
(Big Brother's silenced all critiques!),
and rancid rains acidify
so woods no longer multiply
(for God so wills, we can't deny,
which is, of course, our alibi).
And as the deepest ocean fills
with plastic bags, and garbage spills
upon the plains, across the hills
and turns to poison dust that kills
wild dingo dogs and daffodils
which sink in swamps’ forsaken swills,
the mocking bird makes light and trills
(midst waning wails of whippoorwills)
"Behold the surreal scene that chills
and greet the dread that death distills!
You've had your day with all the frills
that brought the flood and final ills
that can't be cured with bitter pills
nor yet undone with further thrills
of profit gained that grinds and fills
dead desert sands with dollar bills."
EPILOGUE
Though swaddled still in infancy,
we feel we’ve reached our primacy
(aloof, though preaching piously,
disdaining deeds of decency)
and have no need of augury.
But in the pit of prophecy
the crucial questions seem to be:
“Is doom Earth’s fate, our destiny
to twist in tides of agony
destroying nature’s progeny
with no return a certainty
assured by death’s finality?”
and
”Should we plant a willow tree
to someday weep for you and me?”
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 2:45 PM UTC
We rushed on glorious wings
that fed bombs into Baghdad soil
with feverous lust for a hollow dream.
Now nine long years later,
seventeen bodies lie on earth where oil
engenders a lust that’s even greater.
Seventeen skeletons innocent;
Seventeen bloodlines’ descent.
Karzai’s blank solace and Kandahar’s dead
seventeen lay heavier on the heart than lead.
Three tours were far too many,
the fourth far more than he could take.
A sergeant who’d have given any-
thing for his wife and kids’ sake.
Seeing a good friend’s severe injury –
the last blow Sanity could handle.
Morality goes out – light from a candle
swaddled in smoke’s endless perjury.
Seventeen seconds of forethought
may perhaps have faltered his shot;
Seventeen centuries of ponder
and still the heart may have not grown fonder.
Seventeen lovers left alone,
or loves that’ll never come to pass,
seventeen graves of heavy bones
mark where a madman’s mind broke at last.
Seventeen skeletons innocent;
Seventeen bloodlines’ descent.
Karzai’s blank solace and Kandahar’s dead
seventeen lay heavier on the heart than lead.
Sep 2, 2012
Sep 2, 2012 at 7:49 PM UTC
Far away in ancient Jerusalem
Stood a garden, long, long ago
Home to giant oaks and figs
And plants and shrubs of every kind.
On every season, from time to time
Merrily they would burst into bloom
Filling the air with fragrance sweet
And fuelling the hearts with joy and cheer.
Amid the riot of flashing shades
Where Poppies and Pansies held their heads
In a corner, there a Lily stood,
Sans scent and sans grandeur.
A poor loner never once noticed
Nor skilled to steal the show,
Those, brilliant in shade and shape
With contempt openly quipped
‘It’s such a shame
She grows among us
With such pallid shade
And nothing to rave’,
‘Lilies are such lazy lot
Giving only seasonal blooms’
Rang aloud their haughty comments
Rashly blurted out and blunt
The poor Lily wilted in shame
Wishing she had never been born.
Late that evening, through the garden
Into the newly dug up grave
A band of people came with lights
Bearing someone cut and scathed.
With blood oozing, drop by drop
From wounds, left by piercing nails
The body, carefully wrapped in linen
Was the body of Jesus - Son of God
The one who bore the sins of the world
And courted the most accursed of deaths.
The body embalmed was laid inside
And sealed with a giant block of stone
Soldiers posted to guard the tomb
And every vigil so prudently kept.
Early by dawn, three days hence
While it was still very dark
From inside the tomb had come
Rumbling sounds and a blinding light.
Flowers en masse blinked their eyes
Beheld a man, gently walking out
The wounds still fresh on his palm
And the linen that swaddled, lying behind.
As they watched this queer sight
In awful amazement, they did see
A host of Lilies, white as snow
Far more beautiful than any of them
Bowing their heads in reverential glee
And singing Hosanna to the Lord of Life.
All the flora in silent shock
Sighted from whence the Lilies came
They sprang unforeseen in those spots
Where drops of blood from his body fell
Then onwards, without fail
April sees the grandeur and grace,
Of snowy lilies - those delicate blooms
Sprouting suddenly from the crust of the Earth
Joggling their heads in whiffing breeze,
And giving delight to all who behold.
Mar 31, 2018
Mar 31, 2018 at 1:00 PM UTC
You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.
They've changed all that. Traveling
**** as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.
For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.
Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—
Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and ********* her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby.
5.3k
#*Ugh!
they cut
half my tree down
the one closest to me
where the birds made their nest
which became my shelter too
screened and swaddled by boughs
so i'm mourning a myrtle today
as Jonah once grieved for a vine
appointed by God to grow up
and ordered by Him to
go to remind
us there are
things more
important
than plants
like poetry
and people
and maybe
its one of those
i'm really missing anyway*#
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 11:03 AM UTC
(o, holy night)
sweet carols ring throughout the dark
echoing joyously — warm words
wrap their arms around us
with our hearts aglow
we know that we sing
of mercy and goodness
and fulfilled promises
(the stars are brightly shining)
we dance in peppermint winds
against skies ablaze with colored lights
spinning on the water’s surface
but none shine more brightly
than this dawn breaking in me
for come has the One for whom
this weary world’s been waiting
(it is the night)
the air is thick with symphonies of spices
cars glide past us, eager to make it home
children laugh, there are strangers no more
baby born, God of angels and galaxies
distant no more
(of our dear Savior’s birth)
how beautiful this truth -- that
thrill of hope became tangible in a manger
love itself swaddled in cloth
the cry of this child
broke centuries of silence
His eyes bright with a promise
of all things new and glorious
o, how divine
how divine is this night
Dec 9, 2017
Dec 9, 2017 at 11:17 AM UTC
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she pins stars to the ceiling of my dreams ☉ and makes milkshakes of meteor dust and moonshine ☉ in my day, she sleeps swaddled in a billowing blue counterpane of boundless reflection ☉ in my night, she dances a path to eternity ☉ leaving me breathless and in awe of her spiralling splendour
Mar 17, 2021
Mar 17, 2021 at 12:06 AM UTC
My mother enters the kitchen, says that her hands
are dripping, begs my father to finish his work
at the sink. I observe, for a moment, the expression
upon her face which seems conflicted between
a desire to laugh and a need
to feel clean.
I interject that clearly her fate is to have
dog placenta on her hands for all eternity.
Her disgust and amusement seem equally to rise.
After she has washed herself, she speaks of
Ponyo's last intermission between long
intervals of birthing to nap three fleeting minutes;
another contraction gave way to a wriggling
new mole who squeaked and groaned with
bizarre endearment, seizing my heart and causing
its mother's head, after jolting awake,
to go limp.
Mom says it's sad-but-sweet. Dear dog
has spent herself six times already in increments
which, as they increase, draw her spirit still closer
to a totally inevitable chasm of fled energy;
as soon as she falls asleep, yet a new indignant mass
of living parts swaddled in loose skin and wet fur
shoves its way outward, forward, world-ward.
Ponyo is not selfish. Immediately after birth seven,
she begins to lick her offspring clean and nudge it
towards her belly, where it may feed itself.
"Only just got a break, and already she's
back to work."
I'm one of five children my mother has carried
and raised--and for a human, five are many!
I'm afraid to give birth even once, despite
that a greater want of mine is to hold
my own child someday. I wonder if that
is motherhood: discomfort and indecision
concerning the worth of the effort in labor,
in birth, in the weak moments thereafter--
stroking one's child's downy, collapsible head
and feeling a need to protect her, to nurture her,
that is more pressing even than the so-
alluring whispers which Sleep may breathe--
and even beyond these moments, when I have said
to my mother that I hate her (because
to me, it was obvious that I did not,
and was too callous, obtuse, and insensitive
to think that she might just believe it)
and then missed church the next day to stay
with her when she felt ill and tired--if this
is motherhood, I wonder. It must be more even
than I could ever have thought like wanting
to laugh and to wring one's hands
(and even just to go to sleep)
all at once.
Apr 14, 2012
Apr 14, 2012 at 11:05 PM UTC
Images extracted from
the tapestry of my dreams.
Sewn intricate...
Into a patchwork.
A quilt,
embroidered with lavish sequins and ornate beads.
Bringing forth fantastical motifs...
A dazzling display
upon the backdrop of my dreamscape.
Yet...
This mosaic of dreams
does not warm me so.
It never lasts.
They fall away like autumn leaves
come the dawning sun.
They get washed out and pulled into the tide,
as the waves beat upon the shore of wakefulness.
They fade into fragmented memories
that make no sense...
Incoherent and disjointed.
Eventually, they disappear...
For they do not belong
in a world of worldly things
and ticking clocks.
Their intangible and mismatched nature
render them inconsequential...
Naturally...
They get misplaced.
But I am stubborn.
I will fashion such a blanket.
One that skirts the boundary
of this realm and the other.
I will tailor it so...
So that...
I will sleep tonight,
swaddled tight and cocooned within its
glorious seams.
Tucked within the safety and warmth of
this blanket...
Woven immaculate...
Out of
worldly things and breathtaking dreams.
Sep 30, 2016
Sep 30, 2016 at 10:14 AM UTC
Dear Lord, let me recount to Thee
Some of the great things thou hast done
For me, even me
Thy little one.
It was not I that cared for Thee,--
But Thou didst set Thy heart upon
Me, even me
Thy little one.
And therefore was it sweet to Thee
To leave Thy Majesty and Throne,
And grow like me
A Little One,
A swaddled Baby on the knee
Of a dear Mother of Thine own,
Quite weak like me
Thy little one.
Thou didst assume my misery,
And reap the harvest I had sown,
Comforting me
Thy little one.
Jerusalem and Galilee,--
Thy love embraced not those alone,
But also me
Thy little one.
Thy unblemished Body on the Tree
Was bared and broken to atone
For me, for me
Thy little one.
Thou lovedst me upon the Tree,--
Still me, hid by the ponderous stone,--
Me always,--me
Thy little one.
And love of me arose with Thee
When death and hell lay overthrown:
Thou lovedst me
Thy little one.
And love of me went up with Thee
To sit upon Thy Father's Throne:
Thou lovest me
Thy little one.
Lord, as Thou me, so would I Thee
Love in pure love's communion,
For Thou lov'st me
Thy little one:
Which love of me brings back with Thee
To Judgment when the Trump is blown,
Still loving me
Thy little one.
3.4k
Morning twilight. Monochrome.
I see the old Moon, waning, a crescent of white silk.
Venus and Spica share a moment nearby
As the Sun edges the horizon.
In my bag, I feel the breeze gently stir past the open zipper at my shoulder.
Sunrise creeps in.
Clouds mottled and streaked.
Red. Orange. A pillar.
Iron incandescence. Vibrant.
Earth awakens with whispers.
Trees reach and touch with each finger of wind plucking the branches.
Songbirds start. Dogs caution.
First beams break the horizon.
Sixteen geese wing past with down swaddled in the early light.
I rise to give my wife words to see this beauty.
Nov 11, 2012
Nov 11, 2012 at 12:04 PM UTC
i turn to face you,
having just had you
lolling in the sleeping afterglow
but you're not beside me
you're inside of me
hovering just centimeters over me
wrapping warm my body
in your silk blankets,
a heartbeat swaddled.
when did you start to love me so much?
weren't it just yesterday
you had me clinging to
ceramic tiles for any sense
of comfort while my
insides were spilling out?
i suppose i always
asked for a lover
as complicated as this.
Aug 31, 2013
Aug 31, 2013 at 7:06 AM UTC
What rarity can acclaim to this elusive title? Where surely
claiming it itself is against its nature.
It might be what our mothers told grubby faced, knee
knocked flecks that dart from graffitied parks
when light turns dark.
Is it in the eye of the beholder, a stubborn piece
of irritating dust? Perhaps those who search
will never be rewarded with a glimpse as
perfection becomes unfathomably further.
Why does the haughty swan rise when the
it squawks more than the pigeon?
Beauty is boxed. It is wrapped in parcels and
swaddled in ribbon until one forgets that it is in the child's
face and not his hands.
Unmeasurable pleasure shouldn't be contained, it roams and commands like a caged tiger. It controls the eye and navigates,
onward soldier. So perhaps it is not rare at all but there
for all customary enough to
anticipate the undeniable.
Sep 29, 2014
Sep 29, 2014 at 12:19 PM UTC
The river runs it runs with greed
The fast cash of the lucky
Makes it's way to sea
And poison floats with this poison greed
The will of millions, cry out silently
Because they have no idea
about this poison greed
Nurotoxicity
Poisoning our cities
The doctor tells the single mother
To eat an apple everyday
Which only supplement her daily
Methlyphenidate
Neurotoxicity
And baby was born just few pounds light
The tired mother relieved
Baby swaddled in a sheet
Of polybrominate
Neurotoxicty
But all ends were it began
The conspirers of greed
Don't have to loose a thing
The toxic poisonous sludge doesn't run through their garden greens
Somethings
Fish-y
Or is it all the mercury?
East of the railroad tracks
The man smoking crack
Behind a tree
Now breathing PCB's
From car exhaust and factory
Poor ****** breathes
Neuroxicity
And the lucky on lookers equipped to
Notice such a thing or anything
Watch in disbelief
They should all find relief, the poison is fair
It flows through everybody, everywhere
For nothing makes the people sing
Like a mix ethanol and manganese
Neurotoxicty
Spin round and round and sing
This is called brainwashing
Drink your mix of ethanol and manganese
Watch your team throw the polyethylene
Trickle down, trickle
Your loosing the cells right from your brain
While a doctor writes you a prescription to go insane
After years of manganese and PCB's
Jimmy B is lost in the sea of toxins
But mom knows best
He's a hyper brat
Takes him to the doctor to get him
Correct
Doctor gives Jimmy a prescription
The devil's speed
Dextroamphetamine
Jimmy was focused
Jimmy didn't bother
Jimmys brain a couple grams lighter
The doctor intrigued gets a free meal
To switch Jimmy's speed
Four more Jimmies
Doctor can vacation expenses paid
By the sea
Jimmy keeps on taking his pills
Then over night
Jimmy hits his first pipe
Now that's some ******* good speed
And the story goes
Without relief
The government we know
Deligates neurological slavery
Aug 5, 2015
Aug 5, 2015 at 4:20 AM UTC
Covered feet on black clicking the time of walking stride
The fume of frozen gas sticking to my throat
The late winter leaves having stuck to guttered sidelines
Their huddled swaddled backs burdened with the soft shell of academia
I missed this place
As much as it is a sign of failure it also holds triumph
Where I found my mind when I thought the world
Was defined by a god long dead
That I was lost in a sea of faces
Who prayed, believed and spread faith
Like a soothing blanket
Their thoughts where not troubled
They didn't not question
They had hope
As false as I believed it to be
Even now as I watch them
Flocking to bus stop shelter
How they hold a happiness beneath their chilled skin
Glowing with some assurance I feel I'll never have
But I'm pushing for that feeling
That place to belong
Somewhere between down to earth and too consumed with my study
But not quite there enough to fall into that group
That speaks academics but knows when to let go
But I can't let go
When it is a matter to the existence of even having a soul
Why do others not feel this need to know what constitutes their own being
Why do I scream out silently to persons whom I had not hoped to know
For we all know that faces on the web are less real than those we see
Everyday
Every moment waiting for that moment they would reach out and cure the ache of loss
They slow the footfall pavement
When passing the stop
Hearing the lively chatter
The silly matters that don't haunt an old soul not looking trouble
As if their frequency vibrates on a different level
Fm to my Am
Where the genuine character of my self turns back on itself
And I become the shy
Confused not knowing how to approach them
So instead of humiliate I walk by
Singing my oldies and rhyming my rhyme
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 12:29 PM UTC
we did not Dye in vain!
by michael r. burch
(from “songs of the sea snails”)
though i’m just a slimy crawler,
my lineage is proud:
my forebears gave their lives
(oh, let the trumps blare loud!)
so purple-mantled Royals
might stand out in a crowd.
i salute you, fellow loyals,
who labor without scruple
as your incomes fall
while deficits quadruple
to swaddle unjust Lords
in bright imperial purple!
Originally published by The American Dissident
Notes: In ancient times the purple dye produced from the secretions of purpura mollusks (sea snails) was known as “Tyrian purple,” “royal purple” and “imperial purple.” It was greatly prized in antiquity, and was very expensive according to the historian Theopompus: “Purple for dyes fetched its weight in silver at Colophon.” Thus, purple-dyed fabrics became status symbols, and laws often prevented commoners from possessing them. The production of Tyrian purple was tightly controlled in Byzantium, where the imperial court restricted its use to the coloring of imperial silks. A child born to the reigning emperor was literally porphyrogenitos ("born to the purple") because the imperial birthing apartment was walled in porphyry, a purple-hued rock, and draped with purple silks. Royal babies were swaddled in purple; we know this because the iconodules, who disagreed with the emperor Constantine about the veneration of images, accused him of defecating on his imperial purple swaddling clothes!
Keywords/Tags: royal, purple, imperial, Tyrian, Byzantium, porphyry, swaddling, clothes, porphyrogenitos, mollusks, sea snails, royalty, kings, lords, emperors, popes
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 4:35 AM UTC
In the orange cream dying sun's half light
swaddled by blankets wrapped in ***** clothes
I open my lips wanting your taste
eye to eye, mons ***** warm fragrance
To offer myself and soul over completely
When we were young did you ever think
we'd drown in the ocean of flesh between legs?
She smiled brightly, made noises
overjoyed much more than confused,
though that's not the story now, is it?
In an instant passion rises up with steam
gone again before I wipe the mirror and
brush my teeth, and once again I see
blackened debris, they're rotting out
from misspoke verbs
All that's sweet now is the imagining
of diabetic what once was
Two closed eyes reach back with a breathy sigh
withheld truths and well meant half lies,
cannot inspire lift again that left me,
but that doesn't stop the faithful
Has the tide this whole time been sending
waves of false hope, on which I'm floating?
Daydreaming, heating oil, she wants dinner,
and I hunger for satisfaction in new pictures
A hand for a finger, a tongue from both mouths
comforting by grabbing hungrily
until heads get thrown back, abs tighten
when pressed to relax, on the rack
stretched but both floating
Why does she want to drink my blood?
I don't ask just imbibe in return
Those days are long gone
Times when the worst thoughts could not undo
whatever flicker remains in the waning brazier's ember
Mar 23, 2017
Mar 23, 2017 at 7:43 AM UTC
You were already dead
by the time
I was planted in your soil.
Your story is one told to me
through grainy photographs.
Echoed whispers of
peripheral port cities.
Somewhere lovingly untouchable.
My home was once alive.
My stomach lurches
while picturing these
hollow streets,
once filled with laughter.
The harbour
bursting with smiles.
Each neighbour,
a family or friend,
usually both.
How I love this island!
The salted summer's breeze,
hand woven scarlet autumns.
Wild flowers dancing
atop cliff-sides,
free for us
to admire and absorb.
Absorb we did.
I swear my bones
are made of sea-glass.
How could they be
made of anything less?
In their stories,
you are a fairyland.
A cosmically unified olden wood,
dipped in Scotch
and swaddled in wool.
Yet your branches rot,
thinner and damper each year.
Soon the whispers
will be stale air.
No one will be left
to tell tales
of your beautiful youth.
Everything dies.
How I once wished to see
you in your prime.
Even in your postmortem existence,
you've given me
mud to stick my toes into.
I see you
melting into the sea.
I smell your flesh
being swallowed
by bottom feeders.
You are a wonder to me
all the same.
Apr 22, 2021
Apr 22, 2021 at 10:15 AM UTC
This empty ***** bottle,
has been cuddled and swaddled and squandered.
In my ***** it seeps to every dame between,
a dad and not knowing her own preponderance.
I **** I **** by the ****** of my hilt,
of the sword of unrighteous, self help,
and filling their wombs with guilt.
I've never helped anyone all of my life.
Though they would tell you different mistruths,
of their positional view, so skewed by proof,
undo, that I sent them through.
It's a fun house of lies and mirrors shaping figures,
of veneers, so botched that plastic surgeon quacks wouldn't own up to
the scars.
I ferment peoples living.
I turn drunk ****** into angels.
I mask charlatan as queens,
and poison my own gut with the fakes in my head.
Crops die.
Crust subdues verdance.
Chronos rhymes the days and night.
Course subjugation to penance.
But now I seethe my own head into my throat,
and end in ink wrote as prose.
Killing beauty. Art.
**** Art.
Today is.
Death.
Tomorrow's not life,
nor living,
breathing nor breath,
oxygen's just a molecule,
it causes no spark,
except in molecules charged,
with dividing and subdividing,
and rejoining and conjoining into something that can use it.
happy flights :)
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 11:01 PM UTC
"Mother?" Say the child to it's mom.
"Where, oh where, does the platypus come from?"
The woman smiled, and laughed,
and she told the story of where the platypus did come from.
To her sweet, darling, little one.
Once upon a time, there was a duck. And the duck was alone in the forest, because its family had grown up much too much. So the duck went to look for someone, to make his own little family with. The duck just wanted a place to belong, you see.
So the duck went to the lioness and said 'Miss would you like to make a family with me?' But the lioness was proud and scornful, and turned the duck away.
The duck was sad, of course, but he was much more saddened to think that he'd be alone. So he kept on going until he found a deer. But when he asked the deer, she ruefully claimed she already had a family. And that there was no place for a little duck.
So off he went.
He asked a spider, but the spider had a home.
He asked a walrus, but the walrus couldn't be bothered.
He asked a cat, but the cat just laughed.
It came to a time when the duck had asked just about everyone in the forest if they would love him. But right as he was about to give up he came across a stream, and in there a beautiful little otter was there waiting for him.
'Oh wow... uh' the nervous duck said, 'What are you doing there?'
'I'm looking for a way to make a home,' She said, 'I've been looking all day because I'm all alone and quite lonely.'
The duck swaddled and gleefully said.
'Well I don't know if you'll have me, but if there's no one better, you can take me in your stead?'
'But otters and ducks don't go together,' The otter complained.
'And why not? You're a little better under water and I'm a bit better on land. I think we could make a good team!'
'The forest will never accept us,' she continued, but--
'Will you?' The duck interjoined.
The otter sat there puzzled for a moment, and simply said,
'I'll try.'
"And it wasn't easy, my dearest little one. Love never is. It springs up in unexpected ways, and finds you caught unawares. You may find your love in a place you never would have thunk. But it is out there, if you're willing to search for it. I promise you that much."
"But... wait, mom! Where did the platypus come from?"
"Ah. Of course. The duck and the otter went on to have many children, a platypus each and every one. The result of their love was the perfect child, someone who could combine the best of them, and someone who could finally make them a home."
"Wow... mom, that is amazing! I wish I could be a platypus!"
"Hmm? But didn't you know, little one? The otter in that story is me, and you're my perfect little platypus who gave us our lovely little home."
The Mother embraced her child,
as the duck watched at the door, happily forlorn.
Sep 4, 2018
Sep 4, 2018 at 4:43 AM UTC
Across the sky is a blaze of scintillating gold
When the dawn quietly begins to unfold
Each morn is a fresh wonder
As the night willfully bows down to surrender
Every minute is a novel creation
With scenes and sights of great sensation
With every passing hour, new vistas unfold
Bringing insights varied and visions manifold
The blades of grass glow in sparkling dew
As the sun makes his customary march anew
Over the expanse of the brightening sky
Feathered folks to different directions fly
Here and there is many a plant in bloom
That dispels all clouds of graying gloom
Bees hum round opening flowers
Squirrels come out from their hidden covers
The gust of breeze that blows over
Brings scents so sweet in the morning air
The mountains that tower so high
In grandeur seem to touch the sky
The cuckoo and the magpie sing in joy
Their nestlings have nothing to annoy
The cascading falls sound the stringed trumpet
Running down from the mount’s heady summit
As Nature thus pipes a thousand songs
In capturing sounds and melodious tunes
In my heart is born a heavenly melody
That I shall pour out in euphonious rhapsody
Sep 15, 2016
Sep 15, 2016 at 10:41 PM UTC
Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.
Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever I see a six-year-old
swimming in our aqua pool
a voice inside me says what can't be told...
Ha, someday you'll be old and withered
and tubes will be in your nose
drinking up your dinner.
Someday you'll go backward. You'll close
up like a shoebox and you'll be cursed
as you push into death feet first.
Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.
No. I am a daisy girl
blowing in the wind like a piece of sun.
On ward 7 there are daisies, all butter and pearl
but beside a blind man who can only
eat up the petals and count to ten.
The nurses skip rope around him and shiver
as his eyes wiggle like mercury and then
they dance from patient to patient to patient
throwing up little paper medicine cups and playing
catch with vials of dope as they wait for new accidents.
Bodies made of synthetics. Bodies swaddled like dolls
whom I visit and cajole and all they do is hum
like computers doing up our taxes, dollar by dollar.
Each body is in its bunker. The surgeon applies his gum.
Each body is fitted quickly into its ice-cream pack
and then stitched up again for the long voyage
back.
2.1k
Who’s to say how
He might come back for a second
inhumanely heaped-up helping,
if we grant that immensity
of our assumption He did come
kingly first into this inside-
out size from a do-you-miss-me-
yet’s mirthfully mythical realm
I have seen Him
lurking in a particle-board fine
finish on the thin outer membranes
of our estranged and better faces;
He’s Higgs-boson omnipresent,
but far too theoretical
for our broadly practical, turned-
away gazes to rediscover
There He is now
rising in the favela’s gap-
toothed grins with fabulously naughty
corners this glee-pawed grandpa twists
using cur jests his ***** charges
imagine as flightless quarrels
grey-hooded pigeons would gaggle
were they over-stuffed on golden grain
And there again
on a Calcutta mound’s cluttered
conic end, smog-like He slowly lifts
with the crust-gnawed, razor-wire crimps
of a soup-can’s unconsummated lid
as dainty fingers crawl in toward
a gelatinous glob still clinging
to the powerful pretense it’s meat
And there once more,
conceding oms, He restless flickers
at the margins of blocky beige
Beijing screens as crisply clicked clacks
circumnavigate the darkling
smooth patches and spit-spark a few
conscious drips to squiggle out from
the babble of noxious red seas
Emerged, this welp
won’t toddle off to dribble-stain
the dressy linens of a made-up
nanny’s well-mannered and ornate
evil; it will curl up instead,
a swaddled yawn with no yearn to
suckle under His real mother’s
gaping wide and grungy bloused best
Oct 20, 2010
Oct 20, 2010 at 11:04 AM UTC