"thenceforth" poems
The blind Parisian has never seen the tower, or the lights that illuminate his city of birth
The deaf Italian never heard the opera, or Core 'ngrato from a Tuscany street corner
I never looked into your eyes and saw the cosmos
I am distracted by the power of corporate America
The unflinching pacifist still stands atop a suit of armour with his arms outstretched
and Syria rejoices as the stench of liberty matches gun powder and familial genocide
Oh western world, have you forgotten your past so soon?
Explain to the deaf man how her voice sounds
or
Explain the colour spectrum to a blind child
and then deny the tears that water your cheek
Tell the dyslexic that words are meaningless for it gives him comfort
and turn your back on the monetary religion of which we are indoctrinated
Take your ******* industry and bring it to it's submissive knees
Your weapons too, they are a disgrace
Empathy is universal
Love is blind
[Cliche]
[Cliche]
End.
A return, or a refrain, addendum to the ideas thenceforth
It's enough to leave a man crying in his coffee, Starbucks specialty
**** your poets, burn your books and gouge your eyes
This world is not broken, we are.
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 12:45 PM UTC
DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD.
We sat within the farm-house old,
Whose windows, looking o’er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.
Not far away we saw the port,
The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
The wooden houses, quaint and brown.
We sat and talked until the night,
Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the gloom.
We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;
And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again;
The first slight swerving of the heart,
That words are powerless to express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.
The very tones in which we spake
Had something strange, I could but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
Oft died the words upon our lips,
As suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
The flames would leap and then expire.
And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
We thought of wrecks upon the main,
Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
And sent no answer back again.
The windows, rattling in their frames,
The ocean, roaring up the beach,
The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
All mingled vaguely in our speech;
Until they made themselves a part
Of fancies floating through the brain,
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back again.
O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!
They were indeed too much akin,
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
The thoughts that burned and glowed within.
1.5k
¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯
I am but the flower
nigh the wild fox's den
I feel earthen worms
that crawl about
my sultry toes and then
they move the dirt for me
relaxing me
I stand *****
in wait for thee
I watch the *****
nurse her pups
and though she has quenched
my love before
I desire a name and
something more
I so desire the honey bee
without her I feel untended
much unlike the tended progeny
of neighbor mother mending me
though standing guard
I wait for thee
to call my name
and fall on me
to drone a tune
and dance on me
and rob of me
the toil of seed
for a wildflower
by another name
should thenceforth
be deemed
a ****
'til the
nomen
falls atop
mine pate as
favor of the
honeybee.
Jul 31, 2015
Jul 31, 2015 at 4:24 PM UTC
Oh, let me not serve so, as those men serve
Whom honour’s smokes at once fatten and starve;
Poorly enrich’t with great men’s words or looks;
Nor so write my name in thy loving books
As those idolatrous flatterers, which still
Their Prince’s styles, with many realms fulfil
Whence they no tribute have, and where no sway.
Such services I offer as shall pay
Themselves, I hate dead names: Oh then let me
Favourite in Ordinary, or no favourite be.
When my soul was in her own body sheathed,
Nor yet by oaths betrothed, nor kisses breathed
Into my Purgatory, faithless thee,
Thy heart seemed wax, and steel thy constancy:
So, careless flowers strowed on the waters face
The curled whirlpools **** smack, and embrace,
Yet drown them; so, the taper’s beamy eye
Amorously twinkling beckons the giddy fly,
Yet burns his wings; and such the devil is,
Scarce visiting them who are entirely his.
When I behold a stream which, from the spring,
Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring,
Or in a speechless slumber, calmly ride
Her wedded channels’ ***** and then chide
And bend her brows, and swell if any bough
Do but stoop down, or kiss her upmost brow:
Yet, if her often gnawing kisses win
The traiterous bank to gape, and let her in,
She rusheth violently, and doth divorce
Her from her native, and her long-kept course,
And roars, and braves it, and in gallant scorn,
In flattering eddies promising retorn,
She flouts the channel, who thenceforth is dry;
Then say I, That is she, and this am I.
Yet let not thy deep bitterness beget
Careless despair in me, for that will whet
My mind to scorn; and Oh, love dulled with pain
Was ne’er so wise, nor well armed as disdain.
Then with new eyes I shall survey thee, and spy
Death in thy cheeks, and darkness in thine eye.
Though hope bred faith and love: thus taught, I shall,
As nations do from Rome, from thy love fall.
My hate shall outgrow thine, and utterly
I will renounce thy dalliance: and when I
Am the recusant, in that resolute state,
What hurts it me to be excommunicate?
1.4k
within Zieglerville, pennsylvania
genuine snow white hair
upon her noggin doth adorn,
perhaps she will divulge to me (in private)
after i croon (to said lass),
the melody of Jimmy Crack Corn
hmm...or, maybe this mission
perchance twill be doomed from the start,
and hence finding me forlorn
thenceforth, a backup contingency measure,
would warrant me to don my thinking cap,
and for extra ordinary reinforcement unfold
each Taj Mahal shaped ear flap
plus (for reinforced ironic steeliness),
aye also resort to buttress
any aural "stormy Dani yelling)
via walled in interlap,
which accouterment functions
as a double agent i.e. (or,
to be rather crude),
an audiological jockstrap
to vet or figuratively kneecap
any unwanted infiltrating leaping lap
ping "FAKE" distracting news
inducing madcap
mass media circus
driving this generic teetotaler
to pour himself a nightcap
essentially providing wig gull room
with very little margin of ear err, or overlap
against bigwigs to trumpet pap
pill low ma rendered free and clear
asper insidious (mama mia) paparazzi
charting imp pea ching fear
bringing out bare arms
most likely something internuclear
simply to discover visa vis authenticity
if cute employee
(sporting hair
white as the ****** snow),
which doth simmer and glare
blindingly, thus necessitating sunglasses
(I choose the Ray-Ban brand)
as recommended by cited
all time favorite pharmacist
who unwittingly (or simply because
my myopic eyes didst stare)
fixedly - drawn to such a darling (doll ling)
explaining any reason to go THERE
to CVS - that tis where.
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018 at 5:58 PM UTC
As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
Knows suddenly, with music high and soft,
The Holy of holies; who because they scoff’d
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they
In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
Together, within hopeless sight of hope
For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?
1.3k
I will wait here.
I will wait precisely in this cabinet,
Until you prise it open
In that delicate curiosity
That is lost in ‘today’.
My words are more patient than myself.
I know that now,
I think I always did.
It is why I love and
Why I love so patiently.
I will wait so gladly in my place,
Until poetry is fashion once more.
It is a sure case
In a sorry state.
Hearts that beat too fast
And breaths that are too frequently
Forsaken for a foolish enterprise
Of some invested individual
Sat watching behind a blast screen.
I will wait here and think back.
To remember the fuzzy nothing
Of my childhood mind. I recall little
But the polarities. The spaces of life
That intercede mere existence.
I bask in these doctored images of a past
That I never quite had. A fatherless summer
Forgotten instantly in garage top vigils,
Kicked footballs and years that were endless.
I wonder if my words will last longer
Than the etchings of your gravestone.
I wonder more so whether you would
Approve of them and how much I would
Have cared if you did not. A father is lost
And is abstract for me. Like God,
An ever-present utterance of nothing at all
Or perhaps everything that I am
Or could possibly ever be.
I wonder whether my love of words
Is nothing but a longing for permanence
In a world that has forever shown me
Futility. I have read of it in your name
Again and again through till now,
And thenceforth years to come. Your name,
How it needs to mean something,
Your voice, your ‘I’ through the ages,
For it envelops me within it - we are the same Mr.
It is within your void that I search for a father.
An ancestor to tell me who I am
And from where I have come. The plight of the
Ape-men that have been, their legacies
Wrought in blood-stained gold
But also in each yellowing poem
And from the hand prints on cave walls.
These are the will of my fathers,
The trinkets on my mantelpiece.
It is within you all that my words
Remain patient. It is within you all
That my will remains clear. For I know now
(Or perhaps I always did)
That there is a voice amongst us.
It may sleep through the noise of today,
All-talk and no communication. It may sleep
Right on through until we awake. Our eyes
Will burn for staring at the screens,
But our hearts will sing for their reprieve.
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 9:34 PM UTC
XIV
When Faith and Love which parted from thee never,
Had ripen’d thy just soul to dwell with God,
Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load
Of Death, call’d Life; which us from Life doth sever
Thy Works and Alms and all thy good Endeavour
Staid not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
But as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
Follow’d thee up to joy and bliss for ever.
Love led them on, and Faith who knew them best
Thy hand-maids, clad them o’re with purple beams
And azure wings, that up they flew so drest,
And speak the truth of thee on glorious Theams
Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest
And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.
Note: Camb. Autograph supplies title, On the Religious
Memory of Catherine Thomson, my Christian Friend, deceased
16 Decemb., 1646.
1.2k
Narcissus was hunted,
His life abated through reflection
‘Till all that was left was his beauty
Stained on the water’s surface,
And his tale as a flare in the night
For every proud soul.
Thenceforth we shamed ourselves,
For every fleeting glimpse at the face
Which contains the twinned thoughts of our own.
The mirror, now a symbol
Of despicable self-assurance,
Man’s vain invention.
It is the microphone
However; the tool that listens,
Clamours attention to every word
And breaks in vicious soundwaves,
That’s the true measure of vanity,
A catapulted voice.
The mirror, used more so
As a reflection of our self-doubt
And all of the fear people can see.
My self-effacing curses,
My knowledge of singularity,
And total lack of greed.
Sep 29, 2013
Sep 29, 2013 at 4:02 PM UTC
Immaculate imagination of worth! Henceforth, thenceforth, theoretic and poetic creations, laminations of proclamation. Among young, dreaded and loosely threaded. Younger years, I was considered a damnation of a procreation. Delisted and twisted, by other's anger or swagger. Younger years, I was unneeded, often pleaded and whined,
banished, varnished and vanished over time. Theoretically considered a swine. Younger years, although hindered tears; through swindled years. Through the mist, the tarnished bliss. The kiss, oh I miss. Over the mournful and scornful years. Throughout these years... my cheers and peers would frequently and repeatedly disappear. Younger years,
my mother and I bracing, chasing, embracing and facing the open-air. It was focal too partake, strolling to the local lake. Such a blurred affair, which seems fair? You and I were a special pair. In my further years...
I was coerced and forced to pedal-metal up steep inclines with no gears. Through the years, younger years, younger years...
Mar 29, 2012
Mar 29, 2012 at 9:28 PM UTC
Grade-schooler Tito loved going to school
To learn division and multiplication.
He tried to ignore the violence around him
But lived each day with trepidation.
He cut through an El Salvadorian town
To get to his school—a daily trek.
He constantly encountered violent street gangs—
Each frightful day a reality check.
One day Tito failed to come home.
The next morning grimly revealed
The poor school child’s dismembered body
Lying in an abandoned field.
Lucas and Marco feared for their lives,
In their small town in El Salvador,
Where violence governed their daily existence
As ruthless street gangs carried out their war.
When the boys’ mother was gunned down before them,
Fearing they’d be next, the brothers thenceforth
Left their home and their few belongings
And started on a long journey north.
Traveling hundreds of miles with no money
To leave a place of chaos and disorder
Would be a daunting task, along with
The added uncertainty at our country’s border.
The gangs in Honduras recruit young children.
In Guatemala they do so as well.
Some kids as young as eight or nine
Serve as drug runners from what we hear tell.
Two of the Central American gangs
That helped to create this horrible mess
Were not homegrown entities at all
But got their start HERE in the U.S.
How sad it is to see children suffer!
How helpless one feels in solving the matter!
But merely doing lip service with no action
Means nothing; it’s worthless. It’s just idle chatter.
Who are these children, fleeing their homes—
Fleeing the lands where violence reigns?
Who are these kids whom the world has let down—
Whose hope for escape is all that remains?
- by Bob B
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 5:46 PM UTC
Take a raven from its nest
and it shall show you which is best
a big black rose that reeks of death
or basilisks fire, poison breath
wipe that smirk from 'cross your face
and go to hell to learn your place
the demons there will treat you well
that is of course if you can stand the smell
if after that you've learned your place today
then I shall allow your life
be thenceforth cleansed from my wicked knife
reaper reaper set me free
before lord satan sets fire to me
and burns my soul 'fore I can live
and finds some torture I am with
fly away on big black wings
but know that when the fat lady sings
your soul is mine for the reaping
and your mind is mine for the creeping.
Feb 21, 2013
Feb 21, 2013 at 11:04 PM UTC
My unwavering soul, how you have betrayed me thus
Now at the hour of my need, most ashamed.
Where is that unrelenting stubbornness
That has been thenceforth a fiery balm to my fears?
Where is that sediment of perpetual outcry
That has been the rock of my prayers and pleas?
Where did it fly, that crux, which bears my bane
But not my bones?
Oh my soul, have you no pity on this man?
Have you no pity on this moonlit, sunless land?
Yet I will walk, I know not where or for how long
And in the trudging footsteps of my jaunt
May I come to the hidden highways and byways
May I come to what I cannot help but truly want.
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 12:17 AM UTC
The synopsis we spend so much time writing - are for characters we no longer are. You cannot always draw lines between what was and what is and what should thenceforth be.
You cannot always make sense of your coexisting truths, you can only know that they are valid.
You cannot avoid good things because somewhere along the line, the character schematic you outlined for yourself doesn’t believe it deserves what you have.
You weren’t meant to be a story that plays out in a nostalgically pleasing way.
Life is vivid, changing, real, and unpredictable.
Unchartable.
With no plot other than the one we’re living in the moment, here and now.
We don’t even realize how often we choose our current experiences based on old beliefs we are still subconsciously holding of ourselves.
Because what we think of ourselves translates into what we allow of ourselves, and what we allow is what we experience, and what we experience is what amounts to our lives as a whole.
A whole of which is a book of stories, of which doesn’t need to seamlessly transition into one another.
Of which doesn’t have to be narrated the same way.
Of which can be as short or long or staggered or confusing or exciting as you want.
You are in control of how it plays out —
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 5:27 PM UTC
Though reading horror stories (macabre),
an only every now and again
genre crazy wave
washing over me like
a killer tsunami,
(subsequently fueling
desperation) to save
thine scrawny ****
(a derriere laughing stock,
and hence cheeky of me to rave),
those rare occasions satiated, when
hung over insomnia heavily bulging,
rheumy myopic blood shot eyes
nonetheless lock into
critical opening sentence determining,
whether adroit kingly author
nimbly setting the stage and pave
ving what thenceforth, pro
misses tubby a cell out ace
in the hole captive audience
(me, this apt pupil), doth brace
himself (by all counts once
a bad little kid) deserving, well...now...
just a bag of bones,
who fiendishly cackles
when leaning in (Sheryl Sandberg like),
whereat after opening sentence, an instantaneous
possessive gnarly hand
forcibly grabs my attention
presaging and frightening
yours truly (juiced in case
ye did not know),
where within the bazaar
of bad dreams epic,
which seems like forever,
when I finally erase
and exorcise the bogeyman who,
masterfully, immediately,
dramatically got woven
lady chattery teeth and all
withering wicked warp and woof
establishing (proof positive),
an excellently crafted
Chiral Mad heavily shades
of night are falling
gussying haunting place,
where the color of evil permeates
every cerebral space
with darkness, said
sub rosa prime evil punctuates
the mind this dream catcher,
whence after four past midnight
the reaper's image appears
sending adrenaline rush,
viz flight or fight blind
did, when firestarter alarm didst grind
passage of time manifesting dark forces
blaze zing atavistic fear itself lined
up battleground formation
from the borderlands of my mind
this even before turning
the first page where the eyes
of drag'n my afterlife shined!
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 4:23 PM UTC
*there upon a time when they knew not life,
thenceforth their kind lived silly, full folly,
believed he who is ancient had to eat
to live, had to hunt, was tranquility.
eventually, time wandered this era;
from dust onto beyond the sky became
a joyous journey, for they dreamed wisely
of the days we could live life with dignity*
May 16, 2016
May 16, 2016 at 2:27 AM UTC
**If only you had stood by me,
patted my back & said
"There's always a next time".
I would have tried again...
If you had held me up every time
I tripped & fell and told me that
wasn't the end...
I would have stood my ground
if you had held out the rope
for me the moments I were deep
down the dark abyss of despair
I would have climbed out instantly
If you had cheered me up
too albeit I hadn't emerged the
very best in the so many a race...
I would have enrolled for another
If you had forgiven me
when I made the first of the
million grave mistakes which
ultimately cost the team
the 999,999 would have been won
If you had listened the many
times I really tried to explain
you probably would've understood
If only you had mourned with me
when I was burying my dead
I would have forgotten my loss
If you had walked with me before
I took the very first step of this
journey, the miles would have seemed less
I'd have walked farther than I did.
if you had knelt down and prayed
with me when I needed to believe
my faith wouldn't have faltered
if you had been there when I was
in need of a shoulder to lean on
I would call you my family
if you'd given me crumbs when I
were hungry, drops when I were
thirsty, clothed my ******
dressed my wounds, counselled me
lent an ear when I battled insanity
I probably couldn't have fallen off
the edge and gone totally bananas
if only you had scratched my back
when I was growing my nails
maybe I could have satisfactorily scratched your itch thenceforth
if only you had read my scripts
and poetry even if they were but
mere rumblings and cacographs
I could have written a glossary...**
If only you had even just tried to...
Jul 6, 2016
Jul 6, 2016 at 12:17 PM UTC
"why mustn’t it fail?"
Why mustn’t -- He fails.
Trenched in the sand, from whence It hails?
From the mirages treacherous, Thenceforth It prevails, yet,
Implore He must, Its ignorance prevails.
It fights Its fights; Its inquiries It derails:
It is a because, not a why not a may(be).
He; shallow his origin as the queries He concocts
why must He question, why mustn’t... He fails.
Nov 27, 2018
Nov 27, 2018 at 11:55 PM UTC
I can't let myself come be with you (all of the time).
I'd get cruel and I'd tire of our sweet loving.
I can't let myself have another drink (I can't swallow).
I'd stop answering, stop thinking, start wallowing n' we both know
where that'd go—real low.
What I can
is take you driving, sunrise-set chasing
falling or dawning, what I can.
Taking my pride in all I can.
I can't let all myself go cuz I wouldn't know (when to stop).
Thenceforth hard-pressed to top what we had, what we got.
I can't let sweet old you into my life (not just yet).
There'd be a price in my eyes, a cost for letting you get.
But yes, maybe, maybe I might, if it's right.
Nov 20, 2016
Nov 20, 2016 at 7:55 AM UTC
I want to get into the indices, please
Tunnel my way through history
Around town not surround sound
Dive into the here and where
Strive for thenceforth not hitherto
Being around and abound
Some legacy is mere trickery
But I want it legitimately
While dissolving to ground
Feb 4, 2019
Feb 4, 2019 at 9:39 PM UTC