Come queen of months in company
Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
And hedge row crickets notes that run
From every bank that fronts the sun
And swathy bees about the grass
That stops wi every bloom they pass
And every minute every hour
Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower
And toil and childhoods humming joys
For there is music in the noise
The village childern mad for sport
In school times leisure ever short
That crick and catch the bouncing ball
And run along the church yard wall
Capt wi rude figured slabs whose claims
In times bad memory hath no names
Oft racing round the nookey church
Or calling ecchos in the porch
And jilting oer the weather ****
Viewing wi jealous eyes the clock
Oft leaping grave stones leaning hights
Uncheckt wi mellancholy sights
The green grass swelld in many a heap
Where kin and friends and parents sleep
Unthinking in their jovial cry
That time shall come when they shall lye
As lowly and as still as they
While other boys above them play
Heedless as they do now to know
The unconcious dust that lies below
The shepherd goes wi happy stride
Wi moms long shadow by his side
Down the dryd lanes neath blooming may
That once was over shoes in clay
While martins twitter neath his eves
Which he at early morning leaves
The driving boy beside his team
Will oer the may month beauty dream
And **** his hat and turn his eye
On flower and tree and deepning skye
And oft bursts loud in fits of song
And whistles as he reels along
Cracking his whip in starts of joy
A happy ***** driving boy
The youth who leaves his corner stool
Betimes for neighbouring village school
While as a mark to urge him right
The church spires all the way in sight
Wi cheerings from his parents given
Starts neath the joyous smiles of heaven
And sawns wi many an idle stand
Wi bookbag swinging in his hand
And gazes as he passes bye
On every thing that meets his eye
Young lambs seem tempting him to play
Dancing and bleating in his way
Wi trembling tails and pointed ears
They follow him and loose their fears
He smiles upon their sunny faces
And feign woud join their happy races
The birds that sing on bush and tree
Seem chirping for his company
And all in fancys idle whim
Seem keeping holiday but him
He lolls upon each resting stile
To see the fields so sweetly smile
To see the wheat grow green and long
And list the weeders toiling song
Or short note of the changing thrush
Above him in the white thorn bush
That oer the leaning stile bends low
Loaded wi mockery of snow
Mozzld wi many a lushing thread
Of crab tree blossoms delicate red
He often bends wi many a wish
Oer the brig rail to view the fish
Go sturting by in sunny gleams
And chucks in the eye dazzld streams
Crumbs from his pocket oft to watch
The swarming struttle come to catch
Them where they to the bottom sile
Sighing in fancys joy the while
Hes cautiond not to stand so nigh
By rosey milkmaid tripping bye
Where he admires wi fond delight
And longs to be there mute till night
He often ventures thro the day
At truant now and then to play
Rambling about the field and plain
Seeking larks nests in the grain
And picking flowers and boughs of may
To hurd awhile and throw away
Lurking neath bushes from the sight
Of tell tale eyes till schools noon night
Listing each hour for church clocks hum
To know the hour to wander home
That parents may not think him long
Nor dream of his rude doing wrong
Dreading thro the night wi dreaming pain
To meet his masters wand again
Each hedge is loaded thick wi green
And where the hedger late hath been
Tender shoots begin to grow
From the mossy stumps below
While sheep and cow that teaze the grain
will nip them to the root again
They lay their bill and mittens bye
And on to other labours hie
While wood men still on spring intrudes
And thins the shadow solitudes
Wi sharpend axes felling down
The oak trees budding into brown
Where as they crash upon the ground
A crowd of labourers gather round
And mix among the shadows dark
To rip the crackling staining bark
From off the tree and lay when done
The rolls in lares to meet the sun
Depriving yearly where they come
The green wood pecker of its home
That early in the spring began
Far from the sight of troubling man
And bord their round holes in each tree
In fancys sweet security
Till startld wi the woodmans noise
It wakes from all its dreaming joys
The blue bells too that thickly bloom
Where man was never feared to come
And smell smocks that from view retires
**** rustling leaves and bowing briars
And stooping lilys of the valley
That comes wi shades and dews to dally
White beady drops on slender threads
Wi broad hood leaves above their heads
Like white robd maids in summer hours
Neath umberellas shunning showers
These neath the barkmens crushing treads
Oft perish in their blooming beds
Thus stript of boughs and bark in white
Their trunks shine in the mellow light
Beneath the green surviving trees
That wave above them in the breeze
And waking whispers slowly bends
As if they mournd their fallen friends
Each morning now the weeders meet
To cut the thistle from the wheat
And ruin in the sunny hours
Full many wild weeds of their flowers
Corn poppys that in crimson dwell
Calld ‘head achs’ from their sickly smell
And carlock yellow as the sun
That oer the may fields thickly run
And ‘iron ****’ content to share
The meanest spot that spring can spare
Een roads where danger hourly comes
Is not wi out its purple blooms
And leaves wi points like thistles round
Thickset that have no strength to wound
That shrink to childhoods eager hold
Like hair—and with its eye of gold
And scarlet starry points of flowers
Pimpernel dreading nights and showers
Oft calld ‘the shepherds weather glass’
That sleep till suns have dyd the grass
Then wakes and spreads its creeping bloom
Till clouds or threatning shadows come
Then close it shuts to sleep again
Which weeders see and talk of rain
And boys that mark them shut so soon
will call them ‘John go bed at noon
And fumitory too a name
That superstition holds to fame
Whose red and purple mottled flowers
Are cropt by maids in weeding hours
To boil in water milk and way1
For washes on an holiday
To make their beauty fair and sleak
And scour the tan from summers cheek
And simple small forget me not
Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot
I’th’ middle of its tender blue
That gains from poets notice due
These flowers the toil by crowds destroys
And robs them of their lowly joys
That met the may wi hopes as sweet
As those her suns in gardens meet
And oft the dame will feel inclind
As childhoods memory comes to mind
To turn her hook away and spare
The blooms it lovd to gather there
My wild field catalogue of flowers
Grows in my ryhmes as thick as showers
Tedious and long as they may be
To some, they never weary me
The wood and mead and field of grain
I coud hunt oer and oer again
And talk to every blossom wild
Fond as a parent to a child
And cull them in my childish joy
By swarms and swarms and never cloy
When their lank shades oer morning pearls
Shrink from their lengths to little girls
And like the clock hand pointing one
Is turnd and tells the morning gone
They leave their toils for dinners hour
Beneath some hedges bramble bower
And season sweet their savory meals
Wi joke and tale and merry peals
Of ancient tunes from happy tongues
While linnets join their fitful songs
Perchd oer their heads in frolic play
Among the tufts of motling may
The young girls whisper things of love
And from the old dames hearing move
Oft making ‘love knotts’ in the shade
Of blue green oat or wheaten blade
And trying simple charms and spells
That rural superstition tells
They pull the little blossom threads
From out the knapweeds button heads
And put the husk wi many a smile
In their white bosoms for awhile
Who if they guess aright the swain
That loves sweet fancys trys to gain
Tis said that ere its lain an hour
Twill blossom wi a second flower
And from her white ******* hankerchief
Bloom as they ne’er had lost a leaf
When signs appear that token wet
As they are neath the bushes met
The girls are glad wi hopes of play
And harping of the holiday
A hugh blue bird will often swim
Along the wheat when skys grow dim
Wi clouds—slow as the gales of spring
In motion wi dark shadowd wing
Beneath the coming storm it sails
And lonly chirps the wheat hid quails
That came to live wi spring again
And start when summer browns the grain
They start the young girls joys afloat
Wi ‘wet my foot’ its yearly note
So fancy doth the sound explain
And proves it oft a sign of rain
About the moor ‘**** sheep and cow
The boy or old man wanders now
Hunting all day wi hopful pace
Each thick sown rushy thistly place
For plover eggs while oer them flye
The fearful birds wi teazing cry
Trying to lead their steps astray
And coying him another way
And be the weather chill or warm
Wi brown hats truckd beneath his arm
Holding each prize their search has won
They plod bare headed to the sun
Now dames oft bustle from their wheels
Wi childern scampering at their heels
To watch the bees that hang and swive
In clumps about each thronging hive
And flit and thicken in the light
While the old dame enjoys the sight
And raps the while their warming pans
A spell that superstition plans
To coax them in the garden bounds
As if they lovd the tinkling sounds
And oft one hears the dinning noise
Which dames believe each swarm decoys
Around each village day by day
Mingling in the warmth of may
Sweet scented herbs her skill contrives
To rub the bramble platted hives
Fennels thread leaves and crimpld balm
To scent the new house of the swarm
The thresher dull as winter days
And lost to all that spring displays
Still mid his barn dust forcd to stand
Swings his frail round wi weary hand
While oer his head shades thickly creep
And hides the blinking owl asleep
And bats in cobweb corners bred
Sharing till night their murky bed
The sunshine trickles on the floor
Thro every crevice of the door
And makes his barn where shadows dwell
As irksome as a prisoners cell
And as he seeks his daily meal
As schoolboys from their tasks will steal
ile often stands in fond delay
To see the daisy in his way
And wild weeds flowering on the wall
That will his childish sports recall
Of all the joys that came wi spring
The twirling top the marble ring
The gingling halfpence hussld up
At pitch and toss the eager stoop
To pick up heads, the smuggeld plays
Neath hovels upon sabbath days
When parson he is safe from view
And clerk sings amen in his pew
The sitting down when school was oer
Upon the threshold by his door
Picking from mallows sport to please
Each crumpld seed he calld a cheese
And hunting from the stackyard sod
The stinking hen banes belted pod
By youths vain fancys sweetly fed
Christning them his loaves of bread
He sees while rocking down the street
Wi weary hands and crimpling feet
Young childern at the self same games
And hears the self same simple names
Still floating on each happy tongue
Touchd wi the simple scene so strong
Tears almost start and many a sigh
Regrets the happiness gone bye
And in sweet natures holiday
His heart is sad while all is gay
How lovly now are lanes and balks
For toils and lovers sunday walks
The daisey and the buttercup
For which the laughing childern stoop
A hundred times throughout the day
In their rude ramping summer play
So thickly now the pasture crowds
In gold and silver sheeted clouds
As if the drops in april showers
Had woo’d the sun and swoond to flowers
The brook resumes its summer dresses
Purling neath grass and water cresses
And mint and flag leaf swording high
Their blooms to the unheeding eye
And taper bowbent hanging rushes
And horse tail childerns bottle brushes
And summer tracks about its brink
Is fresh again where cattle drink
And on its sunny bank the swain
Stretches his idle length again
Soon as the sun forgets the day
The moon looks down on the lovly may
And the little star his friend and guide
Travelling together side by side
And the seven stars and charleses wain
Hangs smiling oer green woods agen
The heaven rekindles all alive
Wi light the may bees round the hive
Swarm not so thick in mornings eye
As stars do in the evening skye
All all are nestling in their joys
The flowers and birds and pasture boys
The firetail, long a stranger, comes
To his last summer haunts and homes
To hollow tree and crevisd wall
And in the grass the rails odd call
That featherd spirit stops the swain
To listen to his note again
And school boy still in vain retraces
The secrets of his hiding places
In the black thorns crowded copse
Thro its varied turns and stops
The nightingale its ditty weaves
Hid in a multitude of leaves
The boy stops short to hear the strain
And ’sweet jug jug’ he mocks again
The yellow hammer builds its nest
By banks where sun beams earliest rest
That drys the dews from off the grass
Shading it from all that pass
Save the rude boy wi ferret gaze
That hunts thro evry secret maze
He finds its pencild eggs agen
All streakd wi lines as if a pen
By natures freakish hand was took
To scrawl them over like a book
And from these many mozzling marks
The school boy names them ‘writing larks’
*** barrels twit on bush and tree
Scarse bigger then a bumble bee
And in a white thorns leafy rest
It builds its curious pudding-nest
Wi hole beside as if a mouse
Had built the little barrel house
Toiling full many a lining feather
And bits of grey tree moss together
Amid the noisey rooky park
Beneath the firdales branches dark
The little golden crested wren
Hangs up his glowing nest agen
And sticks it to the furry leaves
As martins theirs beneath the eaves
The old hens leave the roost betimes
And oer the garden pailing climbs
To scrat the gardens fresh turnd soil
And if unwatchd his crops to spoil
Oft cackling from the prison yard
To peck about the houseclose sward
Catching at butterflys and things
Ere they have time to try their wings
The cattle feels the breath of may
And kick and toss their heads in play
The *** beneath his bags of sand
Oft jerks the string from leaders hand
And on the road will eager stoop
To pick the sprouting thistle up
Oft answering on his weary way
Some distant neighbours sobbing bray
Dining the ears of driving boy
As if he felt a fit of joy
Wi in its pinfold circle left
Of all its company bereft
Starvd stock no longer noising round
Lone in the nooks of foddering ground
Each skeleton of lingering stack
By winters tempests beaten black
Nodds upon props or bolt upright
Stands swarthy in the summer light
And oer the green grass seems to lower
Like stump of old time wasted tower
All that in winter lookd for hay
Spread from their batterd haunts away
To pick the grass or lye at lare
Beneath the mild hedge shadows there
Sweet month that gives a welcome call
To toil and nature and to all
Yet one day mid thy many joys
Is dead to all its sport and noise
Old may day where’s thy glorys gone
All fled and left thee every one
Thou comst to thy old haunts and homes
Unnoticd as a stranger comes
No flowers are pluckt to hail the now
Nor cotter seeks a single bough
The maids no more on thy sweet morn
Awake their thresholds to adorn
Wi dewey flowers—May locks new come
And princifeathers cluttering bloom
And blue bells from the woodland moss
And cowslip cucking ***** to toss
Above the garlands swinging hight
Hang in the soft eves sober light
These maid and child did yearly pull
By many a folded apron full
But all is past the merry song
Of maidens hurrying along
To crown at eve the earliest cow
Is gone and dead and silent now
The laugh raisd at the mocking thorn
Tyd to the cows tail last that morn
The kerchief at arms length displayd
Held up by pairs of swain and maid
While others bolted underneath
Bawling loud wi panting breath
‘Duck under water’ as they ran
Alls ended as they ne’er began
While the new thing that took thy place
Wears faded smiles upon its face
And where enclosure has its birth
It spreads a mildew oer her mirth
The herd no longer one by one
Goes plodding on her morning way
And garlands lost and sports nigh gone
Leaves her like thee a common day
Yet summer smiles upon thee still
Wi natures sweet unalterd will
And at thy births unworshipd hours
Fills her green lap wi swarms of flowers
To crown thee still as thou hast been
Of spring and summer months the queen

You can still find our pictures
behind gilded frames.
If you take time and the trouble
You can find out our names.

We are fading from memory
as our Families pass on.
We’re the crew of the Thresher,
long time gone down.

Our boat was the pride
of the  Atlantic Sub Fleet.
Five years on our station,
patrolling the deep.

We were out on an exercise
Two hundred miles off Cape Cod
When, quite unexpected,
We encountered our God

A critical subsystem failed
the reactor shut down
Without power or steering
The thresher would drown

Our companion ship heard
A roaring like wind.
We were crushed by the pressure
as the Thresher caved in.

Some worker on shore,
in a hurry to lunch,
Had missed a weld on a pipe
-The Inquiry board’s hunch.

You can still see our pictures
behind gilded frames.
If you take time and the trouble
You can find out our names.

We are fading from memory
as our families pass on.
We’re the crew of the Thresher,
long time gone down.

It was after we passed Moby’s Dock
that Ebony met her first thresher shark

He was five feet long or so
two feet shark, three feet tail,
and had just been pulled from the surf
to be proudly displayed
by the fisherman who had caught him

Ebony stood transfixed
her every muscle poised
her feathered tail twitched
as she leaned closer to inspect
and then recoiled from this cold-blooded beauty
still dressed in fleetingly iridescent
blues and greens and purples -

As the sun’s fading beams highlighted
the magnificence of this dying shark
I mourned his loss that night.

The noise and tourists
in the Pier’s arcades and bumper cars
did not detract from the peacefulness
of the Pacific in her chaos
for this was August
and they would soon go home

I watched a distant storm at sea
flashing fire against the deepening twilight
I stood, and Ebony,
gazing at the flashes of lightning

My hand felt her softness and warmth
as I stroked the waves of her black fur
relishing the cool wind on my face
listening to the rigging
of the boats resting at anchor off the Pier

Thinking about thresher sharks
Willing them away
from this place with its fishermen
and cold, baited hooks

Cori MacNaughton
13 Sept 2000

Retail-hunter gatherers pick
clean processed bones, digging graves
with their shiny teeth, studious in
their reveries as they drone

past worlds dumped in the thresher;
the trucked-in fields of film-wrapped
gore splayed lustily before the managers
wound tight in Machiavellian design.

A shepherd herds his flock of
wreathed iron back to its pen, its
skeletal tangle lit in riotous gold by
swords flung from lambent eyes of
pre-dawn’s shunting chariots

Cages shunt and bobble like tugboats
chugging stoic up swimming pool lanes
of nondescript tile, cheered on by shouting
colours to float through archipelagos of
paper towel and chocolate blocks past

the vegemite diaspora, and the arctic
wastelands cased in sliding glass fields of
perfect steady storms as wraiths baked in halogen
ask silent questions of the silverbeet, while

Lana Del Ray’s voice falls like
nightshade—slutty and serene—coating
shelf stackers in a Piaf sadness as the
shelves reach their arms out for more.

The check out chick hatches
a sense of déjà vu as carrots
and biscuits drone towards her
mind berEFT of any twitching
sense of POSsibility that wised
up and flew this leering coop and

deep in her catalogue of grey folds
something stillborn and waxen is
perched on gleaming steel, reeling
out her guts like cassette tape with jerky
nightmare arms and laughing like a
banker watching ***** films, mornings
dull cerise an invocation through
auto-jaws as she bursts out to warble
with magpies in car park’s climbing fire.

When will the day bring its pleasure?
  When will the night bring its rest?
Reaper and gleaner and thresher
  Peer toward the east and the west:--
  The Sower He knoweth, and He knoweth best.

Meteors flash forth and expire,
  Northern lights kindle and pale;
These are the days of desire,
  Of eyes looking upward that fail;
  Vanishing days as a finishing tale.

Bows down the crop in its glory
  Tenfold, fifty-fold, hundred-fold;
The millet is ripened and hoary,
  The wheat ears are ripened to gold:--
  Why keep us waiting in dimness and cold?

The Lord of the harvest, He knoweth
  Who knoweth the first and the last:
The Sower Who patiently soweth,
  He scanneth the present and past:
  He saith, "What thou hast, what remaineth, hold fast."

Yet, Lord, o'er Thy toil-wearied weepers
  The storm-clouds hang muttering and frown:
On threshers and gleaners and reapers,
  O Lord of the harvest, look down;
  Oh for the harvest, the shout, and the crown!

"Not so," saith the Lord of the reapers,
  The Lord of the first and the last:
"O My toilers, My weary, My weepers,
  What ye have, what remaineth, hold fast.
  Hide in My heart till the vengeance be past."

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Maiden, maiden, maiden, a depilidate mobious minaret –
Holical, Eris begs an atlatl defection, the
Genuis-from-Mars technique – an erathicus lecanopteris.
Suffretex, past-perfection in pastel gloxinia,
Glowingly acidic and shiftingly glossidic, it’s cosmaltry mariala;
Ungual outmoded, holonym singing Aquilar rapax as demiurge.
Demos and Phobos weep, coruscating terrathos, killing riva.

Swell quickly, optic ophidia, lest the ira florena rise –
Rise, maiden, rise optic ophidia, ignore Irredelphine!
Strut the hematacolpa and pace-willow, but fail flow:
Deciduous telechir beckons, demanding autobogotic-hajra.
****-venom and picea hovea, eche verri naught echo –
Beta-decay and COBOL error, fandango with teeth
And sing praise for Eucladanic soignè solaris

Sprint quick, maiden-solidago gesparisè, to Misra pourum!
Majerns and hapax, death-knell aloud and encelia,
Enfloranè, haste! Enatic haste tichodrome, flee, anise!
Apios, harken: tryst-sans-thermobic sweeping of thresher-thrown,
Little-low else yet achroma, de-jubilance:
Fall fairly, ayah! So to be so, blanking systemic,
A thousand steps for one death.

For the Chipmunk in My Yard
By Robert Gibb
I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over. All afternoon
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,
While all about him the great fields tumble
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky
To be where he is, wild with all that happens.
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.

From What the Heart Can Bear by Robert Gibb. Poem copyright ©2009 by Robert Gibb. Reprinted by permission of the author and Autumn House Press.
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Related Content

We are human
Walking traumas
Left untreated
Open wounds
Being leeched
To treat
The wrong fever
It is incongruous
Being inoculated
Against the wrong disease
Vaccinated with apathy
So we don’t feel
The sores that bleed

But you have to laugh

We are mortal
Not merely men
Nor women
More like
All the things
Around and in-between
Searching
Sub-consciously
For peace
Trying to sustain ourselves
While losing
Everyone else
Crying

But you have to laugh

We are little boxes of flesh
Lego people made to fit together
Chipped
Scratched
Lost and found
Each stress tearing at our flesh
Rending our skin
Like a thresher
Building internal and external pressure
Till we need release
****** and or emotional

But you have to laugh

Ready to cry
Sometimes
We are ready to die
Till the brain twitches
Till the broken switches
Leave you in stiches
And you see something strange
Irony or absurdity
Life twisted in its purity
On the verge of exploding
Not really knowing
But something hits
Something fits
Presses the right button
Slapstick
Stupidity
Intellectual curiosity
Sanity flipped on its heels

But you have to laugh

A chortle a choking gasp
The tension breaks
The air whooshes past
You have no control
You have to laugh
The world doesn’t change
Much
The feelings are still there
But with each laugh
It gets easier to bare
It’s a chemical reaction
With endorphins and stuff
But I don’t think you care
It’s just what you needed
To fight off the despair

So I say it again you have to laugh

Long time no see, Grandpa; I'm coming to chat
Though it has been a while since I’ve done even that
Grandma’s here too in some form, relief for which we yearn
To the dead I’m no wiser, but I have a few lessons learned


To say I still know nothing would make you right, yes
Belief’s bound by faith, at end times just a guess
I’ve climbed very few mountains, but I’ve seen from great heights
I know for there to be darkness, there must be some light
My same life’s inching forward, but the weather has changed
I want you both to breathe deeply, it’s been trying to rain
I have a story of sunburn; wish I knew if it's the way
It's always been cause I’m anxious, will we be okay?


I’ve learned that most people can’t see past their own lives
And some do call this living; more like plight to survive
We’re not that far from the ocean, yet the reservoir’s running low
While I'm content with sweaty boredom, walled in like Jericho
My story about sunburn; I went home, saw old friends
We had our reminiscence, too soon that time ends
I went into his house, my skin singed in the AC
I'm twenty three, only burned twice, today was too strong for me
Now I’m reddened from two hours of solar intensity
Then he laughed and lifted his shirt to show me his body
Said he fell asleep while outside, woke up in flames
But the worst were the blisters, felt he’d been maimed
And couldn't move, just sit and will it away
It’s never been that bad all his life, but it rained yesterday


Then we talked about weather, technically living in drought
So the news has told me, something I could do without
And from that conversation, I’ve fostered an idea
This was abnormal, drained, choking dyspnea
From simply being exposed to just moments of sunlight
That lesson I’ve learned concerning short human sight
This year one of strangeness, the layman seems blind
To the problems we face; to those who lack peace of mind
Such as myself and some others, it’s painfully obvious
And we've yet to change, selective ignorance, the true bliss
For I’ve thought a lot on god, cursed him on hands and knees
To potential deaf ears, could be no one but me
And sometimes I applaud, if he’s just watching, twisted, bored
Maybe I have it backwards, and suffering’s the reward
But from my experience, hate and pain, sorrow, strife
Also age much too quickly; cruelty, greed becomes trite
If our souls are the same, this much I do know
That those with bitter hearts are the ones most alone
So if at first there was nothing but the empty and him
That would be pure peace, why even let pain begin?


So if god is there he may possess a heart somewhat like mine
He must, the world loves to rain, plants live off of sunshine
It’d be a waste to make things grow; it takes effort, what’s the point
If you’re to be alone regardless, is oblivion a viewpoint?
No, I think there must be a purpose for me to feel like this
The fluke of life itself's a miracle, how can my heart not exist?
It can’t be for nothing, we plant seeds cause we love
To watch things grow and enjoy fruit, the same must hold true above
Our physical perspective, a perception so finite
In the one song, the universe, our lone note’s a delight
Because there is beauty, I’ve loved, made true friends
To believe it turns to mere ashes, that there is nothing depends
On the idea you aren’t here at all, yet thought itself is disproof
Even though I’ve lived a little more, to the dead I’m still aloof
And of course I have my problems, my mistakes and regrets
But if there was no greater purpose, I wouldn’t care for sunsets


Back to my story of sunburn, this chilling concept
Brought me to tears, sky tries to rain, won’t be let
By the vicious spiral that we’ve nudged down this path
It becomes the tale of mother earth and simple math
By which I mean logic, there was mother earth whom god loved
And it was requited, delighted, life sprang forth thereof
And the earth loved her creatures, and most loved her back
While the rest just pretended, the most sophomoric act
Even more foolish, pain went along with their plan
More problems to be solved and the swollen demand
To be distracted in comfort, submerged deeper in blood
But be afraid of earth’s landslides, her petulant mud
Yes, storms are coming, but we have been warned
And if we can understand it, it can’t do any harm
Insane are the ones who think they control
Her weather and our minds, or that eternal soul
They say to fear flooding and fires, tsunami
Climate change and extremists, then want you to be
Subservient to a class above its own hypocrite laws
While the media has our focus in its malodorous maw
While we toil in clockwork and they hoard this world’s wealth
In this twisted game, for now I at least have my health
The old sun used to be comfort, but now it is haunting
The lack of storms that are coming is now just as daunting
Mother earth, she still loves us, thinks we can be saved
While we poison and take till she’s conclusively drained


Luckily for her, she can heal, for us it shall be too late
And now all of her creatures would share the same fate
The thought prods tears through ducts, finally out of my eyes
As it rains putrid water out of hideous skies
And they’ll burrow deeper into abysmal caves
Ignoring destruction, tornadoes, the giant waves
That wash it all away; flush us all down the drain
At least it would happen quickly, be a little less pain
Skeletons sunk to bottom and condensed by sea pressure
The storms would be mercy, not that radiant thresher
That will give us all cancer, that impatient sun
Leaks through our cells to mutate, and you know that no one
Can win here, if you’re exposed too long you’ll be doomed
In sickness and misery, seared in that gleaming gloom
The only solution at this point would be run and hide
Forget the sky and the surface, about ozone they lied
While for us, fear and greed, you know won’t leave space
They'll call themselves lucky, lock the hatch in our face
For they’ll never change, so you know they’ll run out
Crushed by earthquakes or each other, till the last death's about
And once the weather is gone, after the brightness and heat
Strips all air away, earth once more waits to meet
And feel that god brush upon her tear stained cheek


What if earth loved us so much and that made it her bane?
Let us destroy her while she was just trying to rain

Lost in the blue, trying to winnow the way to you:
Swift flies the sickle; the aim be sharp and true;
The thresher dividing the wheat from the dross,
The clearing, it gleams where the golden rows close.
The day may be long but with scarce a complaint
So long as the grain is kept free of all taint.
With long winter shadows returning again,
The laid up fall stores soon turn sour and thin
Again will I dream of toil spent in the sun
I'll count all the hours till winter's undone.

To the limits!
And the heaves are harmed, in our lungs
and arms. Tendons flexed on their utmost,
and breath at play in the drowned coast.

To the shores!
And the leaves are left as specks of colour,
from the moors.
and vacations left the hinterlands
of the decayed, breathless holler.

For the greater good we stood as imagined heroes,
Yet for happenstance to lend a chance in our woes,
required a great many motifs
to clamour and climb
In glamourous time
to the raised butte
of a finishing sublime.

Modulate the past and harmonize the future.
Together tapestry'd, akin to patchwork suture.

We weren't raised this way.
To remain forever at play, workhorses neigh.
And sawing brilliance and sawdust eyes,
rapier wit with no equal.
But together a two-parter,
to the shores to see the sea quell.

Wildfire lick like lit flame.
Burn it all down and give me the blame.
It's a carried burden worth the worry.

In mountains some exist as prideful barons.
Barring the loss of their barren,
their smiles turn smirks of heathen carrions.
Which is fine, and the motif licks again.
And the motive is sublime; it's only sin.

Cherish the children and their rue of thresher-born,
Thomas Ligotti and his party of philosophy,
but I'm too caught in histrionics to allow the matter
to matter.
Beyond the kicking feet of the mirthful pitter-patter,
pitted against the coming solstice of time saving;
forward and back and ouroboros we may.
Hold on tight to this singular day.
Ignorant of the causes of our own decay.
Lost during summers covered in spittle and seaspray.
Only to mount a return, a loss,
to the area most unaccepting of the cost.

To the mountaintops!
**** what you see, and reap what you sow.
Push the mountains down into the crow,
and call out for the all the denizens below,
"Here's another landslide." As you call; Heave, and **.
Pile them neat and plant a seed,
of a tree that hasn't belonged or had a chirped song
in a placidity.

wrinkles of the plastic
over the mattress, the mountains
their faces blue
and their
shadows
something arousing.

is your head between your heart?
now along the letters
burrow emotions.

i am hearing feedback from the thresher,

the alleys,
for all creed
or age

the one becoming the other.

they together do not wonder
if the lips

if the lips what?

Hiding behind the walls of the ceremonial preparations,
the zone of the kaka of the Jews,                nourishing the school
always as a current,         not pregnant.                    drank of its water to read,
the water can be a pain that plays Aquarius,
                       the ambiguity
                       of the refreshments,                              
                     ­        when the planet is in a great tumult.
That is, the name dictated by the jellyfish of the giant
is a strong, a strong giant arm of the lever was heard
in a beautiful lake in the gardens, the Almighty,
the smell of smoke and images of the funeral of DNA
when the ghosts are about Thomas Mark Hawley,
a girl from the Western Hills Western Shadow Association,
sat down too late & was married to meet the Carotis laptop,
two sources of Arab cats, the bag is black,
the black television star, the *** of the white house
is part of the red city on a green mother of the Future,                    very well.
Dead Americans actually die while recording,
playing, losing music to high school teachers.
Third, as an example, the best way is the most beautiful,
it is the yellow of the sky,
the North America of amino acids of the price that in Latin America,
Latin, Africa and in America are the dead eyes of women,
Europe and South America.                                         Italy,
protected groups and the solidity of the cult of the Latin American
               reputation as a lonely woman,                                     and a woman,
the definition of a mother,                                     a star of the black,
red, white, summer and summer in summer,                            Africa, Europe,
South America and Asia Italy
Third day in the United States,
green for the error of the stars that Britain issued to collect the best.
Lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady,
lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady,       mistress of the Lady,
lady, lady, lady, lady,                         Love the Dead Summer Lover,
      dead son and red dress from the eyes of the London Americans,
green boy from Latin America,
               deaths from third to...
And the wall of the notification of the thresher-low
of Kafka of the Jews,                   have given themselves to feeding the flock,
as long as the pregnant woman
   does not play the current,               she drinks
from this water of this one, read, play,
water cannot be intelligent for Aquarius:
the ambiguity of soda, as well as for the planet,
a big name, to the dictation of jellyfish;
a strong giant giant glorious arm of the bar
  in the garden's powerful lake *** funeral
of hearing ghosts in the DNA of the brand Thomas Hawley,
a girl sat in the Western Hills and Western Shadow
Association later,       was married to know a carotid laptop,
a couple of sources of Arab cats and the black bag,
the black TV ad *** house is red,                   white
is a part of the city,                              in the field of the mother of the future,
with excellent results. The Americans died on the recording, tap,
their music off the high school teachers.
The third way, for example,       the best way is the most beautiful,
the sky is yellow, amino acid price of America,
North America as in Latin America,      Africa and Latin America
from the eyes of women,   Europe and America from the south.
Latina Italy, the peasant of the group of active and passive powers
of the sect of Latin American countries,
the report to the list of the female alone,
and the woman that is, the definition of being a mother,
a star of the black summer, red, green,                    and like in the summer,
in the summer,                   South Africa, Europe, South America and Asia,
and on the third day of Italy by the United States,
Great Britain's error is green,                             that stars to choose the best.
Lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady,
lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, lady,  lady, lady, lady, lady, lady, glory lady Ama died,
and her son died in the Americans
with red-clothed eyes in London,   Latin American young, green with third party deaths

Today I am drawn to Picasso's blue period.
looking for beach-side tragedies in grey fog,
seeing backs where I should see faces.
Everything is askew, backwards, sad.
There is no reason, just rhythm, a muffled drumbeat reminder:
You don't belong here.

You were never whole and don't know what that's like.
Where you are marching,
something at the edge pulls you toward
something else
and that's why you chase it.

My father says we are all part of the same hand.
The distance is nothing.
He pulls his fingertips together, pads kissing the tip of the thumb.
Separateness is an illusion, he says.
It can disappear in an instant.

I am the missing finger
the one lost in a thresher or blown off by a misfired gun.
There isn't even bleeding anymore.
I'm the itching ghost where the finger used to be.
What can you do?
Piece together a life, as if it matters.
Put one foot in front of the other.
March, march, march
Until the moment it slips.

Soften the focus, dim the lights
and maybe you're not such a ghost anymore.
It's that other life, the one on the other side,
and all you have to do is fall.

i hesitate to write
let heart alight
in prance and caper
on blood-soaked paper
squeeze blinded sight
as blobs of night
with ink like mud
scribe life-blood
in skit burlesque
of form grotesque
reveal the hidden
from cell of prison

for pure wine
spirit refined
distilled in heart
through pain and smart
the fruit of mind
from Hades mined,
as minerals rare
as crystalized air,
a c e t i f i e s
'fore human eyes

and poison taints the heavy line
that once in crucible of heart and mind
the hurt and harm from day and year
compressed to diamond crystal tear
in duress constant, heat 'n pressure,
as kernel mauled in wheat corn-thresher
reveals the inner pearl-like sphere
hidden from eye and hidden from ear
now spilt in crave for adulation
for recognition beyond one's station

spilt in scrawl of unnatural saga,
as empty song of Frank Sinatra,
in rigid lines that false betray,
as waves that lie to child at play,
hide the inscrutable, the teeming ocean,
the seething froth of quelched emotion
all to oblige the lust for notice,
as garrulous child, as vivid lotus,
in noisome thirst for recognition
besmirch the purest imagination

where is the true, ingenuous art
the beauty apparent in simplistic heart
without the jazz, the scintillating jive,
the quest to 'have', the unending drive
whose joy is fleeting
as seafarers' greeting
culminates in air
or empty scare,
a ghostly behemoth
of ghastly dedolence
thrives in undergrowth
of curious redolence,
flourishes in hollow
of vacant bellow,
lives in the dark
of empty bark

but yet this world of cause 'n effect,
of light and dark, of sun and reflect,
as sun-drenched wine in oaken cask,
must show its wares in apposite mask,
as gibbous moon to eye discerning
speaks of fire forever burning,
of highs and lows in harmony
of contrapuntal melody,
thus pure must sound as beat on drum
and air give voice to heart that's dumb

I am the lion, the wolf, and the horse,
Rainbow and *** of gold, river and source.
I am a windstorm of passion and rain,
Thresher of tangleweed, drummer of pain.

Flocks of the autumn air dance on my wing,
Soldiers and statesmen both bow heads and sing,
Fireflies synchronize hearts to my beat,
Churchimes clap triumphal rings down the street.

I am an echo in dancehalls of old,
I am the fever that comes with the cold,
I am the soul of the goodness of Earth,
Guardian and blesser of every new birth.

I am the mother bird, high in her nest,
All of the creatures are under my breast.
I am the white dove that flies from the strife,
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.