"sward" poems
Deep on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon:
My breath to heaven like vapour goes;
May my soul follow soon!
The shadows of the convent-towers
Slant down the snowy sward,
Still creeping with the creeping hours
That lead me to my Lord:
Make Thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies,
Or this first snowdrop of the year
That in my ***** lies.
As these white robes are soil'd and dark,
To yonder shining ground;
As this pale taper's earthly spark,
To yonder argent round;
So shows my soul before the Lamb,
My spirit before Thee;
So in mine earthly house I am,
To that I hope to be.
Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far,
Thro' all yon starlight keen,
Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.
He lifts me to the golden doors;
The flashes come and go;
All heaven bursts her starry floors,
And strows her lights below,
And deepens on and up! the gates
Roll back, and far within
For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,
To make me pure of sin.
The sabbaths of Eternity,
One sabbath deep and wide--
A light upon the shining sea--
The Bridegroom with his bride!
4k
I hear my children
I listen
I care
Why won't you listen when I cry?
Why won't you listen?
Do you feel the ground moving?
Can you not hear me?
Can you not feel the vibrations?
Where are you all going to go when winter comes and the cold harsh reality of not having a dwelling settles in?
Who will you ask for help from then?
Will they listen?
Will they care?
Will they let you close
To their fire
Or will you freeze?
Alone,
With no one
No one to care about what war you fought
What you have done to save them
How hard you work at home
How you suffer in silence
Because you can't fly your flag!?
If you could just be you and stand up again! Be the soldier at home
To protect those you love and care about!
Be color blind!
Be deaf to the vile words!
Watch the theft and stop it
With kindness
Before it escalates!
Know that everyone has hard choices
To make to keep their kin alive!
But because you are mean
With your harsh words
You must be fighting somewhere...right?
Are you ready to fight at home?
Let me tell you
BLACK and BLUE does not need to be anyones skin color of the day!
Those colors do not look good on
Any family membor or friend!
Vile words hurt worse
They cut a person down
They replay in our heads
Until we go crazy!
At times that we need strength
Those emotional scars never leave us...
They take up space
In our heads and
Our hearts and even in our souls
They turn us into mean people
Who hurt others
Broken people have sharp edges
Handled improperly
Leaves nothing but
Hurt
Continuing to hurt each other is not the answer anyone is looking for
Maybe it used to be
We can not continue
Not anymore!
Not in 2017
Not now in 2018
Not later
No
Never
Ever
Again!
We need to
STOP!
Stop fighting each other
Start making our world
A great place to live in
Again!
Not just everyone out for themselves!
Our Mother Earth loves us
That is why we have the privilege
Of being alive on THIS PLANET!
Just keep that in mind next time you want to hurt someone else
The pen can be mightier then the sward but it still comes at a price
What are YOU willing to pay?
Will it be your family
Or your friends
Or how about
Your life?
Are the prices we pay too high?
Yes.
So be kind!
Put yourself
In their shoes
Even if
Just
For
A day!
Jul 5, 2018
Jul 5, 2018 at 2:01 PM UTC
I love and love not: Lord, it breaks my heart
To love and not to love.
Thou veiled within Thy glory, gone apart
Into Thy shrine, which is above,
Dost Thou not love me, Lord, or care
For this mine ill?--
I love thee here or there,
I will accept thy broken heart, lie still.
Lord, it was well with me in time gone by
That cometh not again,
When I was fresh and cheerful, who but I?
I fresh, I cheerful: worn with pain
Now, out of sight and out of heart;
O Lord, how long?--
I watch thee as thou art,
I will accept thy fainting heart, be strong.
"Lie still," "be strong," to-day; but, Lord, to-morrow,
What of to-morrow, Lord?
Shall there be rest from toil, be truce from sorrow,
Be living green upon the sward
Now but a barren grave to me,
Be joy for sorrow?--
Did I not die for thee?
Do I not live for thee? leave Me to-morrow.
2k
Huge elm, with rifted trunk all notched and scarred,
Like to a warrior’s destiny! I love
To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward,
And hear the laugh of summer leaves above;
Or on thy buttressed roots to sit, and lean
In careless attitude, and there reflect
On times and deeds and darings that have been—
Old castaways, now swallowed in neglect,—
While thou art towering in thy strength of heart,
Stirring the soul to vain imaginings
In which life’s sordid being hath no part.
The wind of that eternal ditty sings,
Humming of future things, that burn the mind
To leave some fragment of itself behind.
1.9k
I saw her crop a rose
Right early in the day,
And I went to kiss the place
Where she broke the rose away
And I saw the patten rings
Where she o’er the stile had gone,
And I love all other things
Her bright eyes look upon.
If she looks upon the hedge or up the leafing tree,
The whitethorn or the brown oak are made dearer things to me.
I have a pleasant hill
Which I sit upon for hours,
Where she cropt some sprigs of thyme
And other little flowers;
And she muttered as she did it
As does beauty in a dream,
And I loved her when she hid it
On her breast, so like to cream,
Near the brown mole on her neck that to me a diamond shone;
Then my eye was like to fire, and my heart was like to stone.
There is a small green place
Where cowslips early curled,
Which on Sabbath day I traced,
The dearest in the world.
A little oak spreads o’er it,
And throws a shadow round,
A green sward close before it,
The greenest ever found:
There is not a woodland nigh nor is there a green grove,
Yet stood the fair maid nigh me and told me all her love.
1.9k
Fair is thy site, Sorrento, green thy shore,
Black crags behind thee pierce the clear blue skies;
The sea, whose borderers ruled the world of yore,
As clear and bluer still before thee lies.
Vesuvius smokes in sight, whose fount of fire,
Outgushing, drowned the cities on his steeps;
And murmuring Naples, spire o'ertopping spire,
Sits on the slope beyond where Virgil sleeps.
Here doth the earth, with flowers of every hue,
Heap her green breast when April suns are bright,
Flowers of the morning-red, or ocean-blue,
Or like the mountain frost of silvery white.
Currents of fragrance, from the orange tree,
And sward of violets, breathing to and fro,
Mingle, and wandering out upon the sea,
Refresh the idle boatsman where they blow.
Yet even here, as under harsher climes,
Tears for the loved and early lost are shed;
That soft air saddens with the funeral chimes,
Those shining flowers are gathered for the dead.
Here once a child, a smiling playful one,
All the day long caressing and caressed,
Died when its little tongue had just begun
To lisp the names of those it loved the best.
The father strove his struggling grief to quell,
The mother wept as mothers use to weep,
Two little sisters wearied them to tell
When their dear Carlo would awake from sleep.
Within an inner room his couch they spread,
His funeral couch; with mingled grief and love,
They laid a crown of roses on his head,
And murmured, "Brighter is his crown above."
They scattered round him, on the snowy sheet,
Laburnum's strings of sunny-coloured gems,
Sad hyacinths, and violets dim and sweet,
And orange blossoms on their dark green stems.
And now the hour is come, the priest is there;
Torches are lit and bells are tolled; they go,
With solemn rites of blessing and of prayer,
To lay the little corpse in earth below.
The door is opened; hark! that quick glad cry;
Carlo has waked, has waked, and is at play;
The little sisters laugh and leap, and try
To climb the bed on which the infant lay.
And there he sits alone, and gayly shakes
In his full hands, the blossoms red and white,
And smiles with winking eyes, like one who wakes
From long deep slumbers at the morning light.
1.9k
MOTHER of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!
May I sing to thee
As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiae?
Or may I woo thee
In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles
Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,
By bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan?
O give me their old vigour! and unheard
Save of the quiet primrose, and the span
Of heaven, and few ears,
Rounded by thee, my song should die away
Content as theirs,
Rich in the simple worship of a day.
1.8k
Faraway from home and lost with the wild
the mystical fog has surrounded my sight
From seeing the road that lies ahead.
should I despair and sensed be in fright?
My predicament has left me in dread.
Fog slowly suffocates me from my breath.
In my anguish, I cry out to the Lord,
“This path could lead me to my imminent death!
I’ve no guts to walk through the forlorn fog.
Must I walk alone through gravel road and sward?”
Through the smoky fog, a Lyre Bird flutters-
fans his feathers in majestic manner
and sings sweetly like warm days of summer.
Has the lord listened and made his answer?
In the fog, the dusk of doubts dissipate.
Though I walk on this unforeseeable path,
My body burns with vitality of hope
as I've finally found faith in the fog
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 1:05 AM UTC
The haggard lawn is tired of the long hot summer now September has arrived.
Its seedy moustache is no longer luxuriant, but wiry;
A snake-like thing that has ambitiously unfurled without the full quotient of chlorophyll.
It is time to offer the sward the privilege of a cut.
Man moves towards machine, assuming simplicity.
But mower is asleep and will not fire.
At first he tries the simple fixes; fuel is present, spark plugs in place.
But the horticultural haircut remains undone,
As the tease of utility leads him to try louder, less sensitive approaches.
Meanwhile, the rotary monster relishes its narcoleptic interlude,
And the grass grows on.
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 11:31 AM UTC
I heard a heart beat
When I crossed the street,
And I saw a face,
Who longed for an embrace.
A strange entity
Unknown identity
Traveller of infinity
Some sorth of divinity,
Spoke to me the unspoken.
A silent word
Sharp as a sword,
Threw his heart on a sward
Of human sins stored
Like prayers to the Lord -
Words of the silent.
And so his skin
Brilliant, pure, porcelain
Will fade between
The heartaches all around,
Not one tender look is found
Beneath feelings without a sound.
A whisper on his ear,
Surrounded by the fear,
A heavy cold atmosphere
Like a deep pierced spear
Hurting words of someone dear.
He stops and stares breathlessly,
Cries and shouts painfully:
*“The world has changed so dreadfully!
The hearts can no longer bend
Shards and pieces fall endlessly
All there's left in this tranquility
Is the Hopeless, the Unspoken, the Condemned …”*
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 2:50 PM UTC
They marched off with no idea of the forthcoming horrors
For thousands and thousands there would be no tomorrows
They were summoned, no choice, they just had to go
The fodder that falls when the big weapons bellow.
Men who yesterday were working out on the farm
Sent to **** other men who’d done them no harm
Young men who’d answered the clarion call
Went to The Somme, to die, and to fall.
The nightmare of trenches, the cries in the night
The black lines through letters home to cover-up the plight
The new men conscripted who died the same day
Who fell from the bullets before their first pay.
The young soldier killed at the point of a knife
The sad telegram to his new pregnant wife
The horror for one man as he killed another
Standing next to a stranger he now calls a brother.
The smell of the cordite that lingers everywhere
Accompanies the stench in this deathly nightmare
The noise that so deafens, that damages ears
Fearing cowardice charges young men hide their fears.
Men started this obscenity in quiet comfortable rooms
They don’t do the dying nor end up in war tombs
They’ll take all the glory any victories afford
That belongs to those buried beneath foreign green sward.
©JRW2014
Mar 21, 2014
Mar 21, 2014 at 1:14 PM UTC
Menopausal women gather under the tall elms
in a green sward of cooling breezes
Nearby the rushing river is so a-tonally melodic now
As they forgive their ignorances, their mistakes
Their dilatory dreams, their half-steps that backlashed
Their quenchless unseen fire now
the consoling measure of their days
of their secret songs
knowing for those who need,
nothing dies
Apr 3, 2016
Apr 3, 2016 at 12:19 AM UTC
In retrospect,
the nicest part
of that whole afternoon—
what with that summer sunlight,
cascading down onto the sward
where you and I
sat in the deep shade of a noble oak tree—
the nicest part
of that whole afternoon—
what with that dignified roar from Yosemite Falls
resounding throughout the valley
and those songbirds chirping out a perfect counterpoint
in the immediate foreground,
the nicest part
of that whole afternoon—
what with the dry dirt of that flawlessly unkempt
softball field warming our bare toes,
and those children playing—
their shadows ever lengthening—
in that eternal Eden…
In retrospect,
the nicest part
of that
entire
afternoon
was getting to spend it
with you.
May 25, 2017
May 25, 2017 at 5:42 PM UTC
"A blue and gold mistake",
Wrote Emily from inside her room,
A self-inflicted tomb,
About a path she could not take,
Into the month of June.
Let others stroll beneath its cerulean sky
And thank the sward, on which they lie,
A lunging into voluptuous play,
Yet blinded to the rushing by
Of sultry month and jovial day.
Did the poet’s being kept apart
From worldly joys well-made,
Or from crystal pools and glaucous glades,
From brilliant sun that fashions shade,
Embitter her admiring heart
To look askance at anything that fades?
Did she not care that
One month, though doomed to end,
Was also made to reappear
After the long march of winter’s year
As the sun came round again,
To loose us from our unlocked pens?
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 10:46 AM UTC
What heroes from the woodland sprung,
When, through the fresh awakened land,
The thrilling cry of freedom rung,
And to the work of warfare strung
The yeoman's iron hand!
Hills flung the cry to hills around,
And ocean-mart replied to mart,
And streams whose springs were yet unfound,
Pealed far away the startling sound
Into the forest's heart.
Then marched the brave from rocky steep,
From mountain river swift and cold;
The borders of the stormy deep,
The vales where gathered waters sleep,
Sent up the strong and bold,--
As if the very earth again
Grew quick with God's creating breath,
And, from the sods of grove and glen,
Rose ranks of lion-hearted men
To battle to the death.
The wife, whose babe first smiled that day,
The fair fond bride of yestereve,
And aged sire and matron gray,
Saw the loved warriors haste away,
And deemed it sin to grieve.
Already had the strife begun;
Already blood on Concord's plain
Along the springing grass had run,
And blood had flowed at Lexington,
Like brooks of April rain.
That death-stain on the vernal sward
Hallowed to freedom all the shore;
In fragments fell the yoke abhorred--
The footstep of a foreign lord
Profaned the soil no more.
841
Earthen desires,
these are diamonds,
that shield our veiled eyes,
trance like sheathed sward,
hidden in the mantle,
a top the mountain,
creatures lurk atop,
Deviled in the mist,
splattered in Lumios,
The crone and spit;
they really are a horrorshow,
Straggling around,
hovering,
hurtling toward,
*Unknown Territory!
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 10:17 PM UTC
Once there was a
little girl,here in this space.
I can't remember
when, the time or the place.
Then the demons
wandered through the woods which were her world,
cast slowly in to darkness,and the truth, turned to a
pearl.
For many years she battled,proficient to the
last.But fighting only shadows,was the magic they had
cast.
So she conjured up companions to help her win the
war,now she had so many sides,it's easier to
score.
One by one those demons, she placed in to a box and
buried them deep in the woods, and threw away the
past.
The shadows still inside her mind,they fed upon the
pain,
..."Now my little pretty, you will never be the
same".
She let the many sides she had, take turns at playing
house, each one more hollow than the next, empty and
without.
She became the caretaker, the keeper of the
keys.
Guarding over loneliness, a pearl, and
disbelief.
Then the many different sides, could non of them
agree.Who was the greatest qualified, to play the part of
me.
Every time they argued, someone had to lose.
Each one giving up the ghost, & each afraid to
choose.
Soon it was so empty, that she had to leave the
woods,again to fight the shadows, through the bad times and
the good.
The bad times came in thick and fast,without a time for peace.
& Whilst she played with "life's unfairs" back did those shadows
creep.
Way, way back into the woods, a box they searched there
for.To again release those demons, now more power full
than before.
The demons are more cautious now,they hide inside her dreams,and slowly drive her from her
mind, with tortured memories.
Then at the very moment that her spirit drew last breath, a hazy glimmer
caught her eye, and she couldn't yet forget.
Even though still weary,in anguish from her pain,her sward
arose high in the air, her innocence to claim.
A raging battle had begun,the prize a simple pearl.
But that more precious than her life, to just a little
girl.Then, as she looked from out my eyes, a vision did she
see.A stranger talked of promises, of trust and
guaranties.
She even heard him call her name, in the middle of a
fight,and more and more, would see that with his presence
came a light.
This light, it was much brighter,
than any she had seen.
It chased away the demons,
and it made the shadows scream.
He asked her
for an offering, their partnership to seal,she gave
the only thing she had, of which she knew was
real.
Then, after many moments, when that little girl had
grown,he gave to her a present,wrapped in words of not
alone.She slowly looked beneath the words, and in surprise
she saw, a shiny polished tiny pearl, now more
precious than before.
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 6:10 PM UTC
Cornish spring drips and
all growth becomes riddled with
desire for warmth,
ridden with need for having more.
Freshly risen, green
gets liquid-addiction, an invisible
draw makes sward
swoon for regular fixes of water.
Crafty Spring knows
plants crave doses so being fickle
he drops trickles used
to tease shoots upwards for fuel.
Whoresome he opens
cores formerly hidden, then the
illicit physician lopes
in and flippantly erases hopes.
Bold, he impregnates
the deep sleep of inactive nature,
forcing in secret wet
potions to unclothe closed petals.
Then he may withhold
his advances and allow winter's
return to bring nights
of freeze to show is own might.
Old Spring hangs around
to tickle ground's fancy yet Sol's
hard passion he fears
for at start of heat he disappears.
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 6:52 AM UTC
Scratched the stall
Yelled at me in sharpie
From some non-washable preacher
Spelling out the lives of others
Or dictating to me
My own existence
Below pen wielding atheists
Wittily drew back
(or else not so)
Scathing remarks
In hen pecked hand
My thoughts overwhelmed
enveloped
By the smell of *****
A wonder
As to who decided
They needed to drop
Yet another five pounds this morning
Scarred linoleum stairs up
With odd
Unpredictable faces
Like ink blot tests
Deciding upon sanity
Sighing I dig into my pockets
Grasping my own
Trusty ink fed sward
Adding in my sentiments
‘People without lives write on stalls’
Pondering for a moment
What others will think when they read this
As much as I am
I am not a vandal
It is as much art
As this
As much the same
Sinking feeling
That goes with the fact that
I just want
To be
Heard
I just want
To be
Me
Feb 5, 2011
Feb 5, 2011 at 6:21 PM UTC
I'm never the girl they want me to be
Too forward thinking
Too liberal
Too boyish
Too honest
Too sassy
Too mysterious
Too used
Too adventurous
Too much
Part 2
Not Pretty enough
Not thin enough
Not traditional enough
Never enough
If I'm too much of A and not enough of B then together the solution is:
a.) change or
b.) **** off
or some blend of both.
despite being the most undesirable combination of excessive A and deficit B i get labeled a heartbreaker, a ***** a ****
it's a double edged sward, and both ends are out for blood.
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 12:47 AM UTC
pure fiction (or is it)
Cry not for me my country
At my passing swathed in blood
Blood I shed for you
So that in freedom you could live
I was but 21 when the fatal bullit hit
And yes it was no heroes death
As I lay screaming in my own ****
At 21 I was considered old
And looked up to by the kids
But the 7.62 doesn't choose
Who to miss or who to hit
And so to all you brave young men
Who choose to go to war
Do you really want your loved ones
To shed tears over the fresh turned sward
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 5:56 PM UTC
writer's block
again the white washed
wall just there...
curving quickly over head
like an igloo
taking creative reasoning,
stealing words and making
lost, not found the joy of creativity...
but i will fight back,
**** diddley i will
with my trusty pen
as sword....
graffiti- ing gibberish
on it's smug white washed
face...
(salmon scraping against the upward curve of the sward like steamships bumping in the old dockyard...talk to me of joy life procreation....)
marring, scarring, scribbling
away... taking back words and wordplay....
i will not be defeated,
i will not stay in this cocoon
bland and grey....
if i write hard and long
if i doodle long and short
i will see the light dawn
on a new creative day.
so watch me scribe away...
creating portholes in my cocoon
writing words to make the
block a boon....
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 6:46 PM UTC
The long walks along the green meadows of Wastorwan ...
The long spiel of old man at sward..
The blooming tulips at foothills of Zabarwan
My soul forage whereabouts???
The days catching the stars along the Empyrean ...
The days making clay castles
My soul forage Whereabouts ???
The flames of hot Nunchai,
From the Konforka of Samovar,
Once laden on the old woman's Head
ALL NOW BURIED AND DEAD!!!!!
The Whizz after butterflies,
The chords of Gazals,
No more Heart Enthrall,
As all dark and grey !!
Still Here I Lay !!!!
Still Here I Lay !!!!
In the country of Dead
Where everything seems Red
Where everything seems Red
Nov 12, 2018
Nov 12, 2018 at 6:25 PM UTC
all love
through
the crisply murdered toto
of uncouth faces
(FALL) i want to sing
inside you once again
each crimson bending
of vein
the accidental flower
of my hips
some death living
more hotly lathered
in young stupid
lovely dumb lips,
(noth shaping)
unelected silence
that sings to me:
i might feel O'
your primrose hands,
whose palate
,in plushy sward,
cannot house
or unhouse
the lord,.
'
,
'
,
'
'
;
.
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 3:41 PM UTC
He was at the end of the line
His wall had been reached
Palliative care was only stopping his whine
It was now high time to practice
--- that which he had always preached.
They’d tried of course, many times
There had been operations galore
He was now so covered in ugly scars
That his so often cut chest
--- was all puckered and sore.
He decided no more
And consulted his list
Of the things before death he would do
And he noticed he’d put another parachute jump
--- that somehow he seemed to have missed.
He gathered his pain
And went to the club
He arranged a jump fairly quick
Then he thought about life and he thought about death
--- and he sensed that the timing was slick
On the day of the jump in unbelievable pain
He decided he’d not pull the cord
But it made him feel like he was a quitter
So he did
--- and he floated down to the sward.
He may of course now just die in his sleep
Or get run down by a car or a bus
But his choice was to get on with life as it was
Sod the rest
--- he couldn’t stand the fuss.
©Joe Wilson – Choices…2015
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 3:33 PM UTC