"thistle" poems
I came upon a dandelion
An ordinary, common ****
Most people don't look twice
Unless it infected their gardens.
Then it is uprooted, stem and head.
Thrown away and then forgotten.
But that **** meant something different to me
It was sunshine and laughter
Bouquets made of thistle and lavender
Bunched together and given to my mother
It was rolled up jeans
That perfect summer breeze
Cuts and bruises on my knees
It was my childhood
Memories that I can't quite grasp
But what I can remember is the bright yellow,
Stark against the grass
Apr 3, 2018
Apr 3, 2018 at 9:48 PM UTC
You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.
From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.
And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to **** children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!
Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.
And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
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Enrique,
Emilio,
Lorenzo,
the three of them frozen:
Enrique by the world of beds;
Emilio by the world of eyes and wounded hands;
Lorenzo by the world of roofless universities.
Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,
the three of them burned:
Lorenzo by the world of leaves and billiard *****
Emilio by the world of blood and white pins;
Enrique by the world of the dead and abandoned newspapers.
Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,
the three of them buried:
Lorenzo in one of Flora's *******
Emilio in the dead gin forgotten in the glass;
Enrique in the ant, the sea, and the empty eyes of birds.
Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,
the three in my hands were
three Chinese mountains,
three shadows of a horse,
three landscapes of snow and a cabin of white lilies
by the pigeon coops where the moon lies flat under the rooster.
One
and one
and one,
the three of them mummified,
with the flies of winter,
with the inkwells the dog ****** and the thistle despises,
with the breeze that freezes theh eart of all the mothers,
by the white ruins of Jupiter where drunks snack on death.
Three
and two
and one,
I saw them disappear, crying and singing
into a hen's egg,
into the night that showed its skeleton of tobacco,
into my sorrow full of faces and piercing bone splinters of moon,
into my happiness of whips and notched wheels,
into my breast troubled by pigeons,
into my deserted death with one mistaken wanderer.
I had killed the fifth moon
and the fans and the applause drank water from the fountains.
Hidden away, the warm milk of newborn girls,
shook the roses with a long white sorrow.
Enrique,
Emilio,
Lorenzo,
Diana is hard,
but somtimes she has ******* of clouds.
The white stone can beat in the blood of a deer
and the deer can dream through the eyes of a horse.
When the pure forms sank
under the cri cri of daisies
I understood they had murdered me.
They searched the cafés and the graveyards and churches,
they opened the wine casks and wardrobes,
they destroyed three skeletons to pull out their gold teeth.
Still they couldn't fine me.
They couldn't?
No. They couldn't.
But they learned the sixth moon fled against the torrent,
and the sea remembered, suddenly,
the names of all her drowned.
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Flying bloom to bloom,
but no mere dance this faultless path.
You favour puple,
so it seems.
Clover, thistle, orchid, no dream-like drift this bustling march.
In each quick kiss no flower touched twice,
no frantic frenzy,
"keep on, keep on" your gentle buzzing seems to say.
Until, pushing through an orchids sweet embrace,
head buried in the blooms,
Your tiny heart
quietly
ceases
to beat...
Jul 26, 2014
Jul 26, 2014 at 4:01 AM UTC
God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid
In the same way
He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.
But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door
To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot
For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling
In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,
Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies
Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk
Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must
Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,
Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat
By a grisly-bristled
Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow's heat.
But our farmer whistled,
Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled
Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape
A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent
Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent.
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I get the crust and the gristle of a thistle once a missile shooting out into the sky and I cry, wonder why. Never sure what I feel for the meal of a deal and then words more like air slip the breeze in my hair, butterflies in the skies killing what kept my alive. Oh too bad, well how sad, if the songs last lines din't matter it'd harm, it'd make the soul so very mad. Here I fall, there I stand like a robot dancing to the tunes. It's demand. Hear I laugh, hear I cry. I hear the screams and feel the burn, so why? Why unsure, of what's telling me my life is so impure. Threatened heart, from the strings that wrap it, tearing it apart. Feel the clench of a bundle of what you yourself have drench and so benched. And you threw to me the horror show, I never so have thought would reckon me to be. I, to be, it's master and it's longing family, here I cry. Hear "I" cry. For I exist in heart, but never, not in mind. There I stand once again as a memory of all that I pretend. If I tried, to be real, the pieces fall apart inside. So I hide, then I quiver and I shake as 'me' is inside. I can touch to the shelter covered in the unbelieving, underachieving to be who I know I am to be. Or at least what you see. I crush the old me and start anew, though I grew. I, immortal to myself have stomped the true. And I become something greater than simple little shrew. Do not lie! For I see with one eye, the look through me. What you see is a host, not the ghost, that lives on. "Awh, look at me. I'm so strong!" Laugh along. Child there. Where? Oops, forgot to care. Now I stare, towards the end that's never ending like this script. Never ending. Twist and bending. Don't kid me, I'm no kid. I'm the body of a youth, but I am dead. I've destroyed myself, if others didn't do a perfect job. Hold up stop! I'm letting go, a bubble that will pop. It will burst, destroying me, if it doesn't **** me first. Here I stand. Hear I cry. There I go. I have died.
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 1:09 PM UTC
******* in you nose can do that,
This is the rosebush, the fuschia,
the striding spiderweb of summer.
Your trees from the ocean and sky,
and sepals turned sences.
A spindle-spinning wheel,
turning sunflowers to liquid honey,
yum - yum - yum !
Oh the tastes of nature,
hidden in burrow holes,
with small mice chittering their teeth,
through chestnut temples!
A crucified sunflower, soft-spoken ochre,
the pumpkins turning fields to dust
and growing seeds of castles.
Three blades of grass in
tasseled soil.
Three green-squash faces
among the fields burgundy,
growing eyeballs.
Viola splashes wave,
Palo Santo fragrance,
Filling the nostrils with
Happiness!
Day-to-day ecstatic twirls
Twists and twirls,
a steep staircase to
the waterfall's epicenter.
The soul of the falls tumbling
across the sealed creek,
oiled with the feathers of soils.
The queen of frozen loganberries
gazes with approval,
watching seperate streams congeal, spiral,
and form starry nights
beneath the sky.
Lime scent comforting
the ☀ of rivers!
Written by: Lotus and Simon
May 27, 2012
May 27, 2012 at 4:16 PM UTC
*The desperate pounding
on the wall can be heard*
"Love Love Love"
I can't believe you're so shallow.
You refuse. You die.
You vanish like a burning hay,
right here, on the blackened way.
Candy peaks, monotonous points in the sea
Let me descend
Open you a bit
River,
Sun,
foamy stream,
You drown,
Love, dream, dream!
TV screens
Times square
Light-ants
Electric signals through wires
deep dark night flooding rush
Volcano erupting
Surface! Screammm!
Neons
Alcohol on glass
Old charwoman rubs it
with rag
Hands shake you
in the foamy stream
Ha!
Who was right?
The night staggers you
with thousand stars
Wolves howling
Moon
Mushrooms
Dew & violet & knights
& Mysteries
Welcome to the old days
Tomorrow you will be introduced
to the wise King of England
A rocker picks up stuff
and scatters the TV screen
bottles of liqour are smashed
in his house
Glass scattered, guitars wrecked - he's crazy,
pulling out hair, gnashing teeth
-You all killed him
and You are not even aware
Meanwhile a man strolls the woods
searches for mushrooms
on sunny autumn day
he smells moss, bark and undergrowth
He's contemplating the topics of
childhood & ******
Red lipstick smears all over her lips
She's the animal queen
All belongs to her
Thanks to her claws,
cat-moan, and the
short living
aggressive cinder
she owns.
Leather jacket be her weapon,
Night be her moment.
I am the Eye,
and what I see
is a child picking yellow petals
of sow-thistle
kneeling in the sun
in his timeless summer.
Who would know,
that this chapter
would be closed
one day
and the brown leather book
would become dusty
someday
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 6:10 PM UTC
I am a plant.
I am a thistle.
Cirsium arvense.
Creeping thistle.
When you first see me I am a beautiful, colourful flower. But if you come closer, you will notice two things.
1. I can ***** you. My needles are few and nearly invisible, but very sharp.
2. I am not ONE flower. I am a cluster of a hundred tiny flowers.
I am possibility.
My opportunities were not the best when I was a seedling.
The ground was dry and the sun burning.
However, as the forest around me, the sunlight that hit me directly lessened. The rain made the ground more fertile.
The ground is still too dry. I need more moisture to live. It is difficult to see the sun at all through the dense trees. I wish I could at least see a little bit of the sun.
I am a plant.
I am a thistle.
Oct 9, 2022
Oct 9, 2022 at 8:54 PM UTC
pale clouds at the summit
water color sky
cattle guard at wood bridge
creek bed running dry
split log fence downtrodden
razor back in wire
sinkhole on the wild plain
grouse fields under fire
pine bug and a lone wolf
clear cut on the trail
stump lake on the open range
kettle valley rail
raven on the hatheume
slash and burn and scar
blasted church in a tired sun
wild rose under char
thistle in the hollow
quails nest sitting high
carriage house at lone rock
curtains of july
smoke jaw in the canyon
percolator dream
silver sage in chapel
schneider's requiem
stockmen on the wrangle
big horn antler chase
table top at sunset
deacon creek in grace
quarry in a furry
lines of tinted red
spurs and blades and columns
patchwork of the dead
past the bow hill junction
cattle ropes are black
indian amphitheater
saddle on the rack
sun is at a high bake
sedimentary stone
three days on the morphine
skeleton and bone
cold water road is lonely
corrals are cut and paste
gone but not forgotten
the dust filled aftertaste
Jun 3, 2017
Jun 3, 2017 at 1:06 PM UTC
Today the sun was not found
only rain upon these meadows.
Thistle grew, poking through
black clouds of nightfall.
Dark wingless bird, shadow of stillness
in the quiet stars, so long ago forgiveness
and will it come, soon the dawn,
a day to breathe deeply lunged
or fly away these days born of green
ancient as a forest?
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 11:54 PM UTC
On rose and thistle
Does sunlight stumble
Toward what?
But a withered prospect.
Through hour through year
Through vain attempt.
In party of soil and breed.
Be picturesque
Be bloodied in struggle
At one with earth as in design
-
But faint in breath
A scent of sadness
Spring up! And breast doth rise
In arch of flesh
Place colours of hope
Pray promise but from the father
So stay green grass
And red the flower
Of rose and thistle strain
Nov 18, 2010
Nov 18, 2010 at 8:59 PM UTC
Take the thistle
seen by the roadside
that is remarkable
in your eyes above all
for its color, and for its
solitude, and set it in a
*** of good soil in
your house, upon
the window-sill.
There let it sit,
day in and day out,
crown turned
sunwards, and its
leaves outstretched.
Guard it well
from those insects
that would
devour it, and
give it water,
once per week.
Hold it as a
***** friend,
as a child,
before whose
passing shall
leave the world
descendants
many times its
number, that the
likeness of the
thistle be always
kept in memory,
and in time.
Here, and in such things,
is found beauty.
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019 at 11:47 PM UTC
It is nothing,
a mordant of the soul,
an elixir, a panacea, a placebo
for my lesions, there in the thistle, grows
our drastic garden of red posies and hyacinths,
such little things, on the verge,
lilting as the decorum begins to bobble
and slump sideways, and murmur,
on Mondays I can swallow the octave
of your absence, tendrils and all,
red quince limbs parting from the deluge
and in its wake, the wreckage
of black pumpkins and purple corn, hanging
pendulum at our door,
the Autumn lights summon a lavish song to harvest,
thirty seven colours in the brocade you gift me,
tangled and heavy the years upon my bones
begin to spur and flower
into cunning disruptions,
and stratify upon my body like rinds of ricepaper,
vellum for another wish
in the complacent burial of mango flesh,
listen,
as my song liquefies,
drowns you, inundates
each alveoli, and our love
in the swallowing gush, perched,
begins to shudder,
devoured by its symmetry,
stem cells all akimbo
in the shallow pitch of days
bound in a nostrum of wine and liquorice
it is nothing, really,
a mordant for the soul, a tulle filament
twitching in a raincoat of lightning....
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 4:35 PM UTC
In a building not concrete of origin
Near a forest we used to forage in
In the village we muck and wander
Towards the river over yonder
On the isle of sacred Avalon
There was new ground to tread upon
Amidst the brier, bog and heath
Among the thistle, needles and oak leaf
Round the timber fire we sang
Of lady luck’s mercy and lady love’s pain
We drank a drink of potent potables
Phrases spoken few of which notable
From the lambs leg we feasted
While the mystic death we cheated
Nights never ending and those yet experienced
We roam them on and on, ever-delirious
Jan 2, 2010
Jan 2, 2010 at 7:51 PM UTC
~~○♢○~~
there was once
a girl unnamed
ever doubted
ever shamed
untamed fire
high & wild
she was a haunted
white-hot child
a wayward waif
she had no guide
no way to hold
her rage inside
*"you're a ***** little girl,
watch me as I wreck your world!"
bursting brain
as well as bubble
he brought her
a world of trouble
now unloved
unlovable*
charcoal lily
ragged ****
neglected garden
a bad seed
never knowing
her great need
a prickly thistle
tried to hide
all the pain
she held inside
chorus
for years she went on
in this state
unloved, unwise
and reprobate
no turning back
it was too late
wild parties
dating thugs
drinking *****
doing drugs
chorus
But deep inside
the little-girl-lost
a seed of faith
grew at last
she grabbed a hold
and held on fast
then, when things
were at their worst
she began
to hunger ~ thirst!
because her God
had loved
*her first!
"I've loved you, child.
I had a plan
long before the world began.
Please do not be sad or blue,
this destiny included YOU
you are SO important
to My story
you will bring Me such great
GLORY!
here below
in heav'n above
I'll show you how much
♡♡ YOU ARE LOVED ♡♡*
the woman changed
she was set free
who's the woman?
she is
ME
SøułSurvivør
(C) 8/16/2017
Aug 16, 2017
Aug 16, 2017 at 6:10 AM UTC
EMPTY battlefields keep their phantoms.
Grass crawls over old gun wheels
And a nodding Canada thistle flings a purple
Into the summer's southwest wind,
Wrapping a root in the rust of a bayonet,
Reaching a blossom in rust of shrapnel.
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potion lost by unknown souls
effervescent masturbatory master debater
creationism is masochism told from the horses ***
past blast take my soul
make me whole and complete
separation anxiety is ***** envy
memories of mental memos crash past rushing fools
used and abused on cruise control
I misjudged your guided thistle
because missiles are meant for drones not home-oh
listen to the seedless man cry for his dead *****
tediously miserable always unforgiven
what lies hidden within the door
could be a deserted desert dessert
like an after dinner breath mint
or a succinct lunatic on the brink of such destruction
may be distraction fight or flight action reaction
marilyn charles though more bronson than you
Aren’t thou marked for death
broken gasp choked sob
undergod slaughtered in an abandoned euthanasia clinic
euphimistic innuendo more like in your endo
indoor marijuana smoke makes the colors run
my american flag has flown and fled
please jesus save our country bumpkins
napkins go in the lap not as hat
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 3:49 PM UTC
I carry
your memory
everywhere I go.
It hangs
inside my soul,
seems stuck there
permanantly.
For your beauty
will never die.
Like a thistle,
it clings
to my heart
forever.
Apr 11, 2014
Apr 11, 2014 at 5:23 AM UTC
Green is the sky and all the lights of heaven
Are peeking eyes, up to us in given blossoms
Of the flowering clover and bright are new daisies,
Wee sparks of fire who squad, roams of butterflies
And bees on bouncing airstruck mission waysides,
The shot stems of wildlings breech, lancing into sky.
I am the gardener with suns aborning in my eyes,
To pull the weeds wildly and declare all is garland,
I hear trumpet of bindweed, see hearts in the leafs
Of coltsfoot, crowns in the thistle, tapestries, vines
For dress of hair and eye and walls on cottage dry,
Are lovemakes true and keepsakes of joyous times.
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 11:24 AM UTC
A thistle is just enough
to encumber a ruff
rider through the hills
never mind the flour mills
to process and possess
and gain interest
on fervent capital gains
which are not worth the pains
for glory be told
for those who'd rather be old
and grey without headfeathers
and times naught but better
have then the vanity
to spew chicanery
to delve into the society
of anti-sobriety
and them then who lost
streetwise cost
but for the depreciated stock
which will be bought up by the flock
will credit its debits
to gangs that met its
match to the makers
and the tough men shakers
who make it possible to move
product without anything else to prove
than to their mothers
dead fathers and brothers
that one can make a living
off of ******* soul ******* and killing.
Nov 10, 2012
Nov 10, 2012 at 6:38 AM UTC
I used to write poems about nature.
Nothing in particular,
just clouds,
and wind,
and sounds.
Of brief encounters
with other living things
of various species,
none more mysterious than my own.
I remember once,
this bird landed on a thistle.
He was colorful and bright,
offset against the waning light.
Suddenly, sharply,
as if awaiting the tap of a maestro,
as if stricken like a note itself,
he sang his heart out.
It was brilliantly composed,
masterfully performed,
a truly inspired work.
A silence followed.
Looking briefly from side to side,
hoping someone noticed.
He reluctantly flew,
bobbing on gray skies, into the autumnal horizon.
Nov 23, 2013
Nov 23, 2013 at 1:27 AM UTC
Spiral Staircase
first you go down and then you go up
dancing inside your paper cup
your dreams of tangerines in your head
the staircase never ends so many tears are bled
you can try tearing down the walls
pacing back and forth in the halls
you can hide but you can't run
playing keep-a-way not always fun
flap your wings but not your jaws
pain of a thistle in your paws
you cry but nobody hears
they became accustomed to the tears
so what's the use of loud belching tones
when you can know deep in your bones
there is no way to win this race
not up and down the spiral staircase
Gomer LePoet...
Aug 14, 2011
Aug 14, 2011 at 6:33 PM UTC
dry fire,
dry ice,
quiet liar,
quiet mice,
rendered humble,
rendered missile,
sharp rumble,
sharp thistle,
total jarhead,
total *******
something guarded,
something makeshift,
fastened underneath,
fastened monopoly,
melting dragonsbreath,
melting catastrophe,
Apr 7, 2013
Apr 7, 2013 at 10:39 PM UTC
GOLD of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,
Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,
Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long,
Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities?
What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September, acres of birds spotting the air going south?
Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?
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