"tents" poems
If we were the kind of friends who unironically
raised our glasses in toasts,
I would give one to the generation too comforted by the ease
of a honeybee in the plaintively nonexistent mind
of a tulip
To the generation, or at least its subset
that wrongly feels representative, who stumble drunkenly
or maybe just tiredly out of tents
to **** in the view of their friends, who are still at the fire
because the tent was too cold
To those who did raise their glasses in a toast
on New Year’s Eve at what felt, with the ball drop
not screening in luddite protest, enough like midnight.
Beginning with “dear friends” and a couple laughs;
concluding with “now let’s get ****** up” and
a couple more
To those who proceeded
as directed, clinking their shot-glasses
and swigging them back. If only because
they were not tulips.
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 12:09 AM UTC
(10/13/12)
At the beginning of “64” - I packed up my uniform
And walked out the door- it was the beginning of
The Vietnam war.
By August of that same year
President Johnson started the draft
Under protests and jeers.
Then he made it a full scale war
And sent our soldiers to Vietnam shores.
The Beatniks in Greenwich village
With their long hair, beards, and
Flip flop sandals - wrote their poetry
About this undeclared war, and why
Our men were going to those shores.
This created a new generation called ‘HIPPIES”
The hippie generation was groups of protesters
Against everything that they found wrong
The draft , the war , pollution
And loved to stay high with *** hashish
Coke and acid (lsd) which kept them blasted.
This also created the “ flower children”
Who like the hippies loved to be high
And on certain flowers they would fly.
But they spoke of loving one another
And gave out flowers as a sign of peace
Which to the president was a relief.
They all started painting this “53 Chevy impala”
With the words “ flower power”.
Now the “ flower children and hippie movement
Was in full swing, and everyone was doing their own thing.
They had Greenwich village under their control
And not one coffee shop would ever be sold.
Every coffee shop had a poetry night
And going there was such a delight.
Then in AUGUST of “69”
The WOODSTOCK festival was on the rise
Over half a million people drove to that farmland
And set up tents , hammocks, sleeping bags and such
And the police found it was much to much
So they had no choice but to see it through
Because there was nothing else that they could do.
The WOODSTOCK festival had become world wide
And to this day it still thrives.
© L . RAMS
Oct 13, 2012
Oct 13, 2012 at 11:17 PM UTC
It's like the movie
part of me*
It tells me where I should
go and want to be
**Please note that I will say
Not a dark place
inside my suitcase**
"Robin Red Breasted" suit
Peck and nip and tuck in place
The rainbow iridescent
Suiting her taste wet rain tents
Everyone was Green with envy
**Robin/ Rainbow event lets hear
it for our Army so many
troops**
He was sitting politely
Like a salesman of suitcases
on her stoop
She was mesmerized
Living out of a tour suitcase
She wanted daisies she was
ready for fantasies
Of him in her suitcase
Tumbling through
Another time Postman
Singing birds to ring twice
Birds all in groups
Computer laptops she wanted
to be surprised so mysterious
But ready for love ingenious
He laughed not losing sight
Robin eats like a bird
so hilarious
She packed her sunshine
yellow ribbons
she was ready to feed
Those Brooklyn pigeons
Packed suitcase ready for
the love of God
Going frenzy from her fruit loops
Robin Birdie born traveler scoop
Well nested flying South
fully invested
Rocking her flight cradle
Wherever I go or whatever I do
Traveling packs meet
Mr. Ramen noodles
Getting silly splashing puddles
The Spiritual Zen
traveling boots over a shower
He kissed them high up (Eiffel Tower)
Rome Italy wines in love cahoots
The call I'm ready "Amazon" wild
Let us go, child, another story
But the wildcard fresh air
Oh! Dear
The lightness easy does it
feathering wings the clues fit
Packing my suitcase
Love is a drug of "Europe"
Perfectly fine wine
Always hope with cantaloupe
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 9:41 AM UTC
SLOWLY the Moon her banderoles of light
Unfurls upon the sky; her fingers drip
Pale, silvery tides; her armoured warriors
Leave Day's bright tents of azure and of gold,
Wherein they hid them, and in silence flock
Upon the solemn battlefield of Night
To try great issues with the blind old king,
The Titan Darkness, who great Pharoah fought
With groping hands, and conquered for a span.
The starry hosts with silver lances *****
The scarlet fringes of the tents of Day,
And turn their crystal shields upon their *******
And point their radiant lances, and so wait
The stirring of the giant in his caves.
The solitary hills send long, sad sighs
As the blind Titan grasps their locks of pine
And trembling larch to drag him toward the sky,
That his wild-seeking hands may clutch the Moon
From her war-chariot, scythed and wheeled with light,
Crush bright-mailed stars, and so, a sightless king,
Reign in black desolation! Low-set vales
Weep under the black hollow of his foot,
While sobs the sea beneath his lashing hair
Of rolling mists, which, strong as iron cords,
Twine round tall masts and drag them to the reefs.
Swifter rolls up Astarte's light-scythed car;
Dense rise the jewelled lances, groves of light;
Red flouts Mars' banner in the voiceless war
(The mightiest combat is the tongueless one);
The silvery dartings of the lances *****
His fingers from the mountains, catch his locks
And toss them in black fragments to the winds,
Pierce the vast hollow of his misty foot,
Level their diamond tips against his breast,
And force him down to lair within his pit
And thro' its chinks ****** down his groping hands
To quicken Hell with horror-for the strength
That is not of the Heavens is of Hell.
8.3k
The Story
by Kamal Nasser
translation by Michael R. Burch
I will tell you a story ...
a story that lived in the dreams of my people,
a story that comes from the world of tents.
It is a story inspired by hunger and embellished by dark nights of terror.
It is the story of my country, a handful of refugees.
Every twenty of them have a pound of flour between them
and a few promises of relief ... gifts and parcels.
It is the story of the suffering ones
who stood waiting in line ten years,
in hunger,
in tears and agony,
in hardship and yearning.
It is a story of a people who were misled,
who were thrown into the mazes of the years.
And yet they stood defiant,
disrobed yet united
as they trudged from the light to their tents:
the revolution of return
into the world of darkness.
Kamal Nasser was a much-admired Palestinian poet and Palestinian Christian, who due to his renowned integrity was known as "The Conscience." He was a member of Jordan's parliament in 1956. He was murdered in 1973 by an Israeli death squad whose most notorious member was future Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak (born Ehud Brog) later ruled as Israel’s tenth Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001. His adopted Hebrew name Barak means "lightning." As a younger man, Brog/Barak was a member of a secret assassination unit that liquidated Palestinians in Lebanon and the occupied territories. In the 1973 covert mission Operation Spring of Youth in Beirut, which was part of the larger Operation Wrath of God, he disguised himself as a woman in order to assassinate Palestinians. The raid resulted in the deaths of two women, one of them an elderly Italian. Two Lebanese policemen were also killed, along with the poet Kamal Nasser.
Nasser was the PLO's most prominent Christian and he enjoyed "great appeal" in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq "both as a distinguished poet and likeable personality." He was the “conscience of the Palestinian revolution,” according to Nazih Abul-Nidal, who worked with him on the magazine Filastin al-Thawra. Nasser “had the most democratic outlook of all Palestinian leaders at the time,” he recalls. He respected opposing views, admired the commitment of young people, and was a major recruitment asset for the Palestinian revolution. “That is why he was put high on the hit-list.” The previous year, the Israelis had murdered another renowned Palestinian writer and activist in Beirut, Ghassan Kanafani, by booby-trapping his car. Nasser’s successor, Majed Abu Sharar, was also assassinated by Israelis, in Rome in 1981 while attending a conference in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Keywords/Tags: Kamal Nasser, Palestinian, Palestine, PLO, Conscience, Ramallah, Christian, religion, poet, Arab, Arabic, Arab Spring, betrayal, conflict, courage, devotion
Dec 9, 2021
Dec 9, 2021 at 7:55 AM UTC
The garden admires you.
For your sake it smears itself with green pigment,
The ecstatic reds of the roses,
So that you will come to it with your lovers.
And the willows--
See how it has shaped these green
Tents of silence. Yet
There is still something you need,
Your body so soft, so alive, among the stone animals.
Admit that it is terrible to be like them,
Beyond harm.
8k
a) i am the mortar incurring blow after blow
from the abrasive quality of your negligence.
no, i am herb between pestle and mortar
the full realization of 'rock and a hard place'
b) i am the mortar between each brick you lay,
in blue collar glory, or rock star slumming,
to bind shaky corridors of past serenity
and bear indiscretions on my limestone shoulders
c) i am the mortar you fire before crawling under covers
for inexpensive *** and trashier beer
by a lake on a camping trip where tents trump love
like the queen of spades in a hand of hearts
d) in fact, these are false, merely possibilities --
actuality: you were never enough
to make me spew homonyms in metaphor
because you were nothing like them,
always appearing changed but monotonous in meaning,
and if you're so into contraposition,
are we not but names for each other?
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 3:28 AM UTC
Molly came to school when I was fourteen
but she was years older, appearing as a beautiful traveller
who'd circled the globe and made friends with everybody.
She was always the popular one, but one I never got to know,
because my sister at thirty-five told me that she had killed a man
once or twice.
The kids I knew found this hard to believe, as Molly got to know them all.
She'd hang out with them after school, and was always there,
waiting to widen her circle.
Molly never lost her charm,
and she stole the hearts of boys I loved.
She opened their eyes to a world I could not show them,
she drank their blood on Friday nights.
Every boy I'd meet would have a story to tell,
her name dropped like an atom bomb into conversation.
They'd all met her.
They all knew her.
They met her at nightclubs,
and stopped caring about how **** the music sounded
They met her on their holidays ,
and tasted her before the alcohol wore off
They met her at festivals,
where she'd creep into their tents before the main stage lit up
I wonder maybe one day will we be friends
Instead of resenting each other
because she's killed a man
more than once or twice
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 2:07 PM UTC
Creatures crawl from under the roots of trees and bugs scatter from the pockets of the lost to the cadence of sprinkling rain
Silence in the woods of missused life brings out the sounds of wind screaming past the tightened ropes and rusted knives
Those who walk through the aokigahara forest hear a symphony of life that persists through the maimed, a festival of tents and people strung up like decorations as if it was meant for a parade
Nature reclaimed the unused death of unwanted bodies and the rain drained flesh from bones, simulated hell and suicide is what's found soon after passing the warning signs in red and white marked zones.
Mar 31, 2016
Mar 31, 2016 at 2:23 PM UTC
Tempestuous longings from behind the screen of life’s moving picture
You stare back at me, in a glimmering, shimmering afterthought
Laid low by foregoing passion
In a moment’s torrid glimpse from our hollow reflections
Fragrant evenings during seasons of filming
Solemnly captured and revised then experienced
The all encompassing struggle with context and setting
Abides a steely night, in the rustle of autumn branches
Requiem for an unremitting beloved!
Sung in the valley between piercing peaks of sorrow
She floats through the scene as distinct aura and vague essence
An embrace from the trail of vapors and misspent gestures
All emanating from a glass of cider beneath nostrils
Gracefully, you embank on the wind of time’s shadow
And nudge my cheek with impetus and vigor
Lashing out at my skin in ambivalent revelry
As if my follicles were vacuous caverns
Catching the callous moments which flutter the ***** of hillside tents
The unearthly gusts of banality extinguish the projector’s gleam
While nature embodies your beauty furthermore
Toward the end of the pathway
And the credits of the film
And the allegro of the score
And the solitude of eternity
And the rustling of the branches
Aug 30, 2010
Aug 30, 2010 at 12:09 AM UTC
So close to your scent, I feel I should pay rent.
Something you will not know you smell, until a time comes when you go.
And suddenly everything smells like that.
WHAT IS THAT SMELL?
And you calculate the ingredients to the potion of that smell..
A smell you know so well..
But you can not list it's properties
You are it's only property.
A smell you can not tell the smell of.
And when we're back again the smell almost goes, it gets camp set up and lost inside my nose.
You enter the world of this smell, it's warm and it's cozy, it's familiar and almost dusty.
It smells like skin.
Which smells like nothing.
It smells like hair
Which smells like something.
It smells like breath without a particular scent.
It smells like clothes and armpits.
It smells like a sample scent of another world.
Which I am nosing around
It smells like all of your belongings and all the things that you do put into one familiar you.
It smells like sawdust, it smells like dog walking, it smells like toast, it smells like early morning, it smells of the coast, it smells of laptop, it smells of toothpaste, it smells like tents.
It smells of carpets, It smells of washing powder, It smells of your house and your power shower, It smells like Apple shampoo and all the other things that you like to do.
It smells like you.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 5:15 PM UTC
From the House Of Ali -Najaf to the House Of Hussain-Kerbala,
Swarms of people walk 80kilometres for threes days- united,
The largest peaceful gathering in the world with free services,
An experience like no other.
Blessed are those who walk,
More blessed are those who serve.
No discrimination,
Regardless of sect, profession or social status,
Rich or poor,
Young or old,
Men or women,
In wheel chairs, crutches or with Zimmer frames,
Prams or hand carts,
All march with respect and dignity,
With one thought in mind,
To pay allegiance to Hussain,
Who sacrificed his head for humanity.
Every eye is moist,
Every heart torn in grief,
Chanting"Labbaik Ya Hussain."
With an iron will to complete the walk.
A nation, war-torn, wounded,
Embraces the whole world in the name of Hussain,
The longest dining table,
Where every zuwar is honoured and treated like royalty,
To pay in currency, none,
Only love and kindness and an urge to serve the zuwars.
Along the roadside are set up Mowakebs (tents),
That provide every kind of facilities and amenities ,
Food,beverages medicines,toiletries,
Fresh clothes if need be, shower rooms and toilets,
A massage of your feet,
Services to charge or repair your phone's,zimmer frames or prams,
Anything for the zuwars,
All in the name of the Ahle bayt,
Mohamed,Ali,Fatema,Hassan and Hussain.
What Hussain and his followers were denied is served with outstretched arms,
The aftermath of Kerbala was more tragic and callous,
The tears of Binte Zainab that retold the tragedy again and again,
Has born fruits,
The zuwars multiply in numbers
every year,
The rewards greater.
Oct 20, 2018
Oct 20, 2018 at 12:22 PM UTC
© 2009 (Jim Sularz)
Quiet mounds of yellowed tailings and dead weeds whisper low.
And proud rusting relics telling tales of striking gold.
The rush from East, from North and South, by wagon, train or foot.
Days not all that long ago, in tall ships made of wood.
“A gold rush struck in’49, all quite by accident.
A burning fever that cut men to bone, in a sea of dingy tents.
Day and night, they toiled and tolled, many headed home without a cent.
But some packed out bags of glistening gold, and made a stop at "Buzzard’s Breath."
"The town’s mud logged street, deep with horse manure, bubbled like a shallow grave.
With a Sheriff’s office, a livery stable, and a church for souls to save.
And a fancy house, on a grassy knoll – sign read, “Madam Lil la ****
With soft, curvaceous ladies who mined for hearts – and gold of a different sort.
Didn’t take long before easy gold, was extremely hard to find.
And burly miners, tough as steel, moved in to hard rock mine.
With bloodied knuckles, dented hats, they blasted at a furious pace.
To find the gold, called the Mother Lode, yellow blood coursing through their veins!
The mine they worked was called “Long Shot”, the men thought that name a curse.
But the miners hankered for the handle, "Buzzard’s Breath”, and the mine’s name was reversed.
As luck would say, they held a royal flush, when they hit that horse-wide vein.
Of the purest gold, yet to be found, this side of the Pearly Gates.
Eyes wide as saucers, they were all in awe, everyone was filthy rich.
The miners should have all retired and should have cashed in all their chips.
But a man’s hard to figure, when his blood is yellow, and he’s stricken with a gold fever.
“Eureka! Boys, *** the dynamite and a whole lot more mining timbers!”
They mined that vein to the bowels of the Earth, and the heat increased by day.
"Buzzard’s Breath" became the hottest place, to Hell – the shortest way.
And then one day, the men never came back. – Hell must have jumped that claim.
Of the purest gold, yet to be found – that’s where the Devil mines today!”
Quiet mounds of yellowed tailings and dead weeds whisper low.
And proud rusting relics telling tales of striking gold.
The rush from East, from North and South, died a slow and quiet death.
Along with days of tall wooden ships, and the ghosts of Buzzard’s Breath.
Jul 8, 2012
Jul 8, 2012 at 5:46 PM UTC
There are tents with tubs
and tents with mattresses
for the girls and women
in the middle of the camp
behind the front
where they are buried alive
Buried who they were
Wishing to die
from the pain, out of the hell
of unknown soldiers
who are honoured, for
what they do does not happen
Because it's not allowed, so
they will get the flowers
which are not at the camp
that tomb
of the human dignity
of the snatched women
Mar 7, 2023
Mar 7, 2023 at 2:39 AM UTC
the homeless are ******** in the streets,
well some of them are
the homeless have been ******** in the streets
a lot lately
when they are not getting scatological on the streets of seattle
they are conjuring the other images of themselves, because there is always so much more to this story
as they sit on the sidewalk and/or in entrances of shops, restaurants, and other commercial establishments
throwing empty beer cans in the street
at the people walking past
they say seattle is going to be the next san francisco
because that is what tech is, nothing new
forgotten already done ideas redone
same price tags same coast line same **** in the streets
they must have thought something better
was here, waiting for them
when they rode into town
from other towns
housing, more drugs, a new life
in these streets that they **** in
not sure what they heard
their tents under the over pass
their trash upon the hill
overlooking the highway
their tents always have a highway view
their trash too
i should be that afraid of my own life
of what tomorrow will be
oversharing in a voice
that is not my own
miss jean brodie in **** city style
Jul 26, 2018
Jul 26, 2018 at 5:16 AM UTC
Not so long ago we were made orphans Plucked form the family tree that grew us into a nation Phobia struck us like cholera Religion armed us against our brothers Leaders occupied with zero point agenda.
.
Blood, our special kind of rain poverty, the only completed government project Corruption, our newly designed flag And breath, our only hope.
.
Empty caskets call silently for our body As we shoved old bones to make room for new ones Our pain covered with GREEN and WHITE paints Pain, pain all over and over again.
.
We've found a new home Back in the ruins, where we came from Let's mske our tents,and forget fishing traps Because we might be here for an hundred while.
_Drunkpoet_
Jul 6, 2018
Jul 6, 2018 at 5:02 PM UTC
Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, ****** like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded
down starch halls with the other unnested throng
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.
The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,
some pendulum soul, going the way men go
and leave you full of child. But our case history
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.
Now we are here for all the ward to see.
They thought I was strange, although
I never spoke a word. I burst empty of you,
letting you see how the air is so.
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me
and I turn my head away. I do not know.
Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?
Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man's face disarms
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms
my throat. "Name of father-none." I hold
you and name you ******* in my arms.
And now that's that. There is nothing more
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore
rocking off you. You break from me. I choose
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.
4k
It rains dogs and cats outside And I see that clearly on our windows' glass panes ... It's a different Winter Inside those ugly tents of shame .................... It's very cold anywhere and everywhere Simply because that's the way with it ........................ All kids stayed inside their tents Just to die as a cause of that cold weather .......................... Storm Huda , some days ago , brought everything That was extremely bad and ugly .................. Some kids got perished inside Their ugly and cold tents ..................... In Winter and only in cold Winters , Death tolls might increase rapidly anytime ................ _______________________________________________________________
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 1:11 PM UTC
Pieces of
our past.
Wondering how we will
Patchwork
them back
together,
in the days
of the weeks,
the months
of the years ahead...
as you disguise
yourself,
on benches,
in corners, alleys.
Hidden in woods,
underpasses
of freeways.
Tents, cars
of strangers.
Filthy trap houses.
You disappear,
to find
comfort in
the only place
left to heal.
The Deep Depths of Sleep.
Oh how I
worry about
you my love.
You suffer so
for this journey
you have embarked on...
Oh, how I
hurt for you,
yearn for you,
love for you
and cry for you.
Your pain
so deep
keeps you away,
to dwell in the
terrifying place that
encourages
the need to
Self implode..
Obliterate all ability to feel.
Even the
true sense of Belonging
Of being
unconditionally
loved.
Aug 5, 2019
Aug 5, 2019 at 2:04 AM UTC
Once there was a carnival.
It was exuberant and joyful,
With elephants and lions befriending the penguins and sea otters,
And little fairy-like acrobats leaping and zooming across tightropes,
As if they were walking on solid ground.
There was a faint smell of funnel cake and cotton candy and popcorn,
And the sound of people chatting animatedly about,
"Wasn't that act precious" or "oh, darling, look at that penguin! Isn't he cute?"
And then I got a little older.
And the carnival was still joyful, but something had changed.
The carnival had this joyful facade but it was hiding a darker exterior.
The elephants and lions were growing old, and the ringmaster,
Displeased with their best efforts,
Had started to hurt them.
The fairy-like acrobats had gotten injured over the years,
And wobbled a little bit here and there, with hints of hesitation
Perspiring on their foreheads.
The funnel cake and cotton candy and popcorn smell lingered still,
But it was almost as if people had grown tired of the taste,
And in the heat of the summer day,
The food had started to grow stale.
And then I got old.
The carnival had closed now.
Overgrown with weeds,
Stalls and tents covered in graffiti and muck,
It was now a gathering spot for children to make believe,
That they were the fairy acrobats who had once been so agile and captivating,
Or the animals that had struck terror and awe into toddler's hearts.
The carnival was gone,
but the children would run home to their grandmas and grandpas,
and they would tell them the story of how the lion was this close to biting off their nose,
and how one time the acrobat honestly did a front flip from a horse on to a bear onto a lion, and they were honest to God telling the absolute truth no matter what their spouse would say in the room next door.
The carnival was gone, but the stories would go on in a bittersweet never ending circle of intrigue and mystery and magic.
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 1:22 AM UTC
I can't end the year this way,
the title of this piece won't sway,
It is not an anchor to hold the stay,
but wait and listen to the choir singing
as they practice in the church hall down
the road, with too many cars, so listen...closely
and you may hear the high notes on
a night clear like this, just like this,
the information that swirls on and on,
about people, places and events,
homeless people kicked out of the park and tents,
political figures mishapen by absolute power,
absolute greed,
absolution to them a quick rinse in a shower,
more information feed my gluttonous mind,
I absorb none of it as there is newnews to find,
there is a woman out there
who has a reputation for causes,
wicked witch in the East beyond Oz,
gut check as some said
world paused to remember well,
so much left to do there as well,
Oh Africa!
The world's greed for your resources,
makes nasty fodder for the choices,
as to who is in charge this week.
So much pain, it is plain to see I can't write about it all, it would take an eternity.
A loss this year like no other, but a life to celebrate, who will Madiba motivate?
Natural disaster, filled with remorse after the eye of and storm has passed,
loved ones looking their loved ones lost, some evil gang backfills, a brand
of poison into the the void, the pain the anguish, in lives,
to steal the aid and make it their prize, to be aportioned at their will and price.
And George is back in the news...sad, so many things this year that make me
want to ball up my fists and punch the air, walk down the streets until I begin
to shout and let it out, harm no more, harm no more, anniversaries of bullets,
and little ones who touched, so many with who they were, I wonder who they would
have been,
I am not being flip and this is not Christianese, but God knows as the spirits they are
and He is.
There is no one poet
who can say it all,
there is no one place
that tears did not fall,
this may be a wrap up,
I have left so much out
and it falls so short,
maybe the ink I spill
is wrongly placed.
Tomorrow night at midnight, let's just embrace REFRESH!
not forgetting
lessons learned
poetic stripes
maybe earned
by writing or typing or wiping away tears
I could go one, but that is one of my fears,
...losing you.
©DWE122013
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 10:04 PM UTC
Cold winter camping
Frigorific night huddled around fire
Many coyotes auspiciously howling nearby
"Don't worry, they're across the water"
Still I wait at the ready with coyot-basher
Tents in snow shielded from peninsula
By tarps lashed together with rope and ply
"You'd probably die out here" says Oscar
Here meaning Newfoundland
Here meaning the Northern Pen.
Agreeing monosylabically
Nearly hypothermic thinking
Not so bad
Maybe stay another night (says the voice)
Sneak down to water
And jump in ice fishing hole
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 8:47 AM UTC
There's a hidden sweetness in the stomach's
emptiness.
We are lutes. No more, no less.
If the soundbox is stuffed full, there is no room
for music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean with
fasting,
Every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you run up the
steps before you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier—write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, an ugly metal
statue sits where your spirit should.
When you fast, good habits gather like friends who
wish to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring.
Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power.
But even if you have, if you've lost all will and
control,
They come back when you fast,
Like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants
flying above them.
A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see, when you fast, this table spread with
other food,
better than the broth of cabbages.
~Jalal ad-Din Rumi
Feb 28, 2017
Feb 28, 2017 at 11:40 PM UTC
Camping out is an experience everyone should have
The cool grass in the morning and the birdsong
Timeless air keeps you alive, energises the soul.
Freezing feet and nose is inevitable as blanket or sleeping bag
Don't quite make the grade
The hard ground or undersheet has a smell that remains
In your nose and in your memory
Bringing the place back to you in your latter years.
Once breakfast is cooking everything seems OK
The worst part is the transition of night into day
Then day into night,
It's easy, stay up and just look upwards
No light pollution, no clouds, no sound
Drink in the inky blackness as Orion's three winking lights
Demonstrate how wonderful life is
But more importantly how small we are
Tiny dim orange lights glow in the tents and vans
Muffled noises diminish as the occupants climb
Into their cosy beds and roll themselves up
To keep out the cold, the inevitable insects
One by one the darkness becomes complete
Until no more music can be heard or
Voices, rustling sounds or whimpering children
Wanting their teddy bear or comfort blanket
Mummies and Daddies soothing
The silence is deafening save a cool breeze
Just flapping the tent canvas, small cracking
Sounds as it rolls and then straightens.
Rolls then straightens gently, gently, gently
The guy ropes straining a little then relaxing
Another night comes to the campsite
Enveloped in darkness all are safe and inside
Their little tent or van
Goodnight campers, sleep tight.
Max Hale
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 4:43 PM UTC
People held hostage, always living in fear,
The barrel of a weapon, is always near.
Riding the train, a blood curdling scream,
A deafening noise, and a bright light beam.
A violent shock wave tears open your flesh,
The lucky ones, receive skin grafts with mesh.
Your arm torn off, artery bleeding is profuse,
A dying thought is, what was the use?
What was the purpose, to **** all these people?
In the name of Allah, perched on a mosque steeple.
Radical extremists don't care about life,
By murdering people they increase human strife.
Wasting resources, bringing the Earth gloom,
Look at faces on a plane, many filled with doom.
The last thirty five years I don't understand,
Middle Eastern countries, together they band.
Bringing terror and hatred towards cultures of the west,
We accept the need to feel your ways are the best.
Pray all you like, cover up a women's face,
Stop trying to change America's philosophy and place.
Once the oil is gone, and the land again bare,
Back to living in tents, flowing robes you will wear.
Your tactics are old, soon you may feel,
The burning of skin, this inferno is real.
A nuclear explosion will end years of frustration,
No longer putting up with terrorists indignation.
Revolutions reveal, the world ending in flame,
Enough with this nonsense, put an end to this game!
Visit poemsbypaul.com
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 4:53 PM UTC