"throaty" poems
I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table. Common mallards
Were artefacts of some unearthliness,
Their wooings were a hypnagogic film
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.
I ****** the throaty thin woe of a rabbit
Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse
Where a tawny owl was enquiring.
Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions
Into my face, taking me for a post.
7.9k
This poem is dedicated to the fallen of the First World War, and also, to all those we have lost in the years since.
- Somme Harvest -
In the early morning
Dawn of the fiery horizon,
The sea of green caresses the land
And gave it gentle kisses
Of tender sadness.
On this day many an unlived life would find
Life in Death, but first must come Death in Life,
Indeed, a bouquet of barbs grace the
Dark, dank, *****
Halls of Morningstar,
Servants go to and fro preparing the sordid feast
Of unsung heroes.
Babes in arms are they, who shall
Ever sleep till the break of the final day.
Fields of Flanders infertile,
But for the harvest to ripen
The fertilizer of life is
Scattered, battered, tattered,
Sown,
Human manure, nutrient of vitality,
It seeps into earthly soil.
In the year of our Lord,
One thousand, nine hundred and sixteen
Did the farmers collect their greatest bounty,
Not all farmers reaped massive yields,
Farmers Kultur, Sickle and Hammer
Fed their maniacal hunger with rotting corpses,
While famers Lion, Bulldog and Bald Eagle
Wept their hunger with mechanical eyes,
Farmer Scythe, steward of Morningstar,
Laughed dry, dead tears of hungry joy
And sang the golden harvest song
As his blade swam through the harvest thirstily,
For indeed, the harvest was an endless
Smoky sea of blood green
And thousands were sailing.
Twilight gleaming through the sky,
The raging war god vomit’s dry thunderous wrath
And wreaks barbaric, savage, ferocious, ****** carnage below,
As sleeping
Babes in arms fly through the red twilight.
Vultures dressed in human feathers
Gather and crowd around their congealing cold feast,
With hatred sewn on their
Lifeless, lidless
Blind eyes,
They shriek their throaty, ******
Thankless prayers to idle gods.
A multitude of thousands upon thousands
Of souls sour to the heights of Mount Olympus,
Unshed tears,
My child, I saw you in that dusky evening half-light,
Flying, soaring and rising higher with your
Brothers-in-arms.
As I looked up at the darkening sky
My heart wept warm tears of ebbing love,
While my eyes forever dimmed the light,
And my baby,
My body became the Earth,
The phoenix has nested.
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 6:04 AM UTC
for Lori, Riley and Kendrick
the questioning words jump off the page,
into two hands transforming,
words shape shifting into
multicolored ink stained fingers,
now, all a chokehold on my brain,
my throaty gasps rasping from
a simplistic convolution -
single questioning deserving an answer
what are you made of?
the obvious answers left in the slow lane,
bone, tissue, rivers and arteries of blue bloods,
just oil and fuel of a containership,
but the cargo carried, that’s the real stuff
you have insight inside that cannot be seen,
self-survival instincts that morph into morals,
our shared air affects you differently,
a sense of defending, caring,
costless and costliest simultaneously,
spaghetti strands strong sinewed intertwining,
into a better human than most
to call you hero is wrongly insufficient,
but the thesaurus lends me no substitute,
weep, I do,
as the spring and summer blushing green
will not be seen by you at all, and by me,
seen now so differently,
when thinking of
soil-born courage instinctual that has no name,
but grows only in nature
what are you made of?
we know now, but knew not well,
that thing that makes you leap first,
was all you, the entirety of the best,
that exists, existed, as reminders to us,
to mine it, wear it,
medal it upon our fabric
*you three,
breathe it back, exhale it from where ever you are,
that trace chemical odor in our atmosphere,
of life-giving sweetness, a rebirthing chlorophyll freedom
that we humans all desperately need,
even just to know it exists,
and inform us*
what we need to be made of
May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019 at 5:43 PM UTC
Witchy witch your
hair swirls about like
an ash-filled firestorm
Lips of razored glass
cut my throat and my
cry of pleasure is a
coughing bloodspray
Witchy witch I thought
I'll take you naked in boiling
cauldronwater
wet hair skeining over
******* shadowcupped like
two ripe halfmoons
I knew your hair was red
down there too
and in you I'm burning until my
skinnerves are eaten
and I can feel naught but
in you I take your hair like
Fenrir's fireleash
and pull me deeper into your
fleshrose
Witchy witch I thought
your throaty cries meant
I'd tamed you I thought
I am dead because you are
flown
and with you
life
Witchy witch
come back sometime
with wings
of heady night
I wait for you
dead
Jul 12, 2015
Jul 12, 2015 at 7:51 PM UTC
Our love was crafted from heavenly bodies.
Tow trucks, skyscrapers, and chicken farms separated us.
But destiny, fate, and god came together
And gave these three damsels a gift.
Wrapped in blonde bows,
And dry throaty laughs.
We are one of the greatest platonic affairs.
All of us were given to Hades from our mothers;
Their tears fell on the maps they gave us.
As the gods weep, we laugh
At how we found each other in the mess that surrounds us.
All has aligned.
Nothing is perfect.
But nothing truly beautiful
Was born from perfection.
We are our sweaty foreheads,
Large appetites,
Thirst for a knowing,
And a hunger for a longing.
We are a connection
Conceived from something holy and numinous.
Mar 15, 2021
Mar 15, 2021 at 11:11 PM UTC
I don't have pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
I'll stay away from Yellowstone.
If one's asthmatic in the Eifel region
You don't pronounce the "P."
This won't **** me.
I don't have COPD.
Everyone coughs in blue smoke.
My throaty itch won't **** me.
I won't constrict and choke.
I don't have an infectious disease,
Despite my personality.
I run for shelter in acid rain.
I drink water with ice cubes,
And spray my green out back.
As much as I hate to, I avoid rusty nails.
*** is safe... and at a distance.
Despite being repeatedly told to,
I never eat ****
The great imitator
Is a snivelling mime.
If I'm bitten, I recognize the marks.
The erupting of the ring of fire won't **** me,
but perhaps I was precocious
To drop the "P" in
Pneumonoultramicroscopicscilicovolcanoconiosis.
I haven't succumb to animal flues,
I stay clear from the bars.
I donate to the SPCA,
Bet on ponies or the odds of SARS.
I don't have meningitis.
I like lights and loud music.
If I get the night sweats,
I turn down my electric blanket.
I haven't the minor or greater pox,
I spurn comparisons.
According to the scoop and scope,
I ascend and descent C free.
But the time spent on Referrals
Might be the death of me.
I don't have botulism.
My smile still concaves down.
Curling convex above it,
A condescending frown.
I'm not a *****
I feel every poke and like.
My digits number twenty...
Twenty one.
My glasses are smudge free.
If anything I see too well.
Alcoholism can't **** me.
Alcohol can.
I haven't cardio entropy,
But I'd be remiss
To dismiss
The wise counsel Oz gave me:
"Hearts can never be made practical until they can be made unbreakable."
So true.
So true!
Anyway, none of the above will get me.
But, I do have what you have.
The young and grown.
The able and ill.
A hand.
A sweeping hand.
A second hand
Setting those infectious nonogerms
Like diamonds
In my Time-x.
Mar 7, 2014
Mar 7, 2014 at 11:51 AM UTC
Be my baby canopy,
cover me in emerald joy
in gales and gusts, sprays of rain,
Be the shield I shan't employ.
By the seaside running out
of staggered breath, though you know
how cherry my cheeks do get;
hurry, kiss them while they glow.
Be the leaves upon my arms
Flutter, whisper, rustle down
Till all I am is but a noun
held in your mouth, your throaty charm.
Brave the hurricanes with me,
I'll be the one who will not fly,
You'll be the baby's lullaby,
above the rain, so anchoring.
Watch the window, hear it creak
above the pitter patter plain,
bathe in the sorrow of the rain,
come up cleaner, with a squeak.
Be the breath upon the hearth
breathe deeply so your lungs are warm,
feel orange among the grungy storm;
grow a greenhouse in your heart.
Follow me out to the Mar,
walking down into the deep end
and down reproaches Heaven will send;
the solemn tear drops of a star.
Up we go, and all around,
Spin with me, collapse and cry,
Until the clouds do say 'Goodbye',
All we hear are hearts that pound.
In the aftermath, it shines,
Angelic pools, a chorus clear,
The silver light plays softly here
like no one once had shed a tear.
Now my heart chokes water, dear,
So hold your pluviophile near.
Mar 19, 2015
Mar 19, 2015 at 3:20 AM UTC
Do you still go into your
"Executive Chef" voice when people
ask you to describe the ingredients of your famous palleta,
detailing the use of saffron to
brighten the rice golden
in a throaty, overly masculine voice,
deepening as though it too
was hue-d golden by
saffron
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 7:55 AM UTC
There is music at dawn in the song of the koyel
The tweeting, the chirping, the warbling,the cry
The medleys that float in the morning air
As birds sing a welcome to a rising sky
There is music in the span of feathered wings
The steady drone of the humming of a bee
As the sun revels on his throne at noon
While a brisk wind whisks leaves on willow trees
There is music in the silver drops of rain
A gentle drizzle or a thunder squall
Music in the flow of rivers and streams
And the sparkling cascade of a waterfall
There is music on slopes of lofty mountains
In echoes that reverberate of a water spring
In the soft rustling of a valley of flowers
Of blue irises and pink hyacinths
There is music in seas and oceans blue
Waves overreaching to meet the shore
Rippling in sounds of frothy ecstasy
Whispers of pearls and ocean floors
There is music at dusk when the day rests
The throaty croaks in a nocturnal sheer
As moths flutter drawn to light
'Tis music of life that I hear
Aug 7, 2016
Aug 7, 2016 at 9:50 AM UTC
Bathed in the shade of
a rubbery rhododendron,
I sway imperceptibly,
Lulled by nature's rhythms,
A silent, sleepy visitor
splayed on a ropey nest,
Serenaded by an aerial orchestra,
Chirps and trills
and throaty warbles
spiral downward,
Atomized in the languid breeze
like a Roman candle,
A staccato riff,
Jack-hammered into a dying birch,
Urges me back from the edge,
Where dream and dreamer part,
A gauzy memory of a melody lost,
Performed for the oblivious,
and a dozing, grateful
audience of one.
Aug 22, 2013
Aug 22, 2013 at 6:14 PM UTC
This strange egg you've incubated
has sprouted skinny chicken legs.
It follows you around clucking at
every throaty word you nasty-utter.
Pointing and pecking at your guilt
borne by some years ago sin which
all others hatch from and you keep feeding,
Remorseful grains of misdeed shell grit
to harden its anxious green shell.
With no law outside itself the taint faint
heartbeat of your reproof I hear beating
like fear's unglued false eyelashes
You soft swaddle it with empty gestures.
It gestates in every grimace of piety.
I watch it govern your vocation of drab
and undramatic mastery of feathered illusion.
I want to tear shreds in your black satin cape,
To avalanche your fears into frosty exile.
Burn them screaming in the blinding white of
anemic unconscious,
the blacking out.
Hang a trophy **** of your winged demon
taxidermied with glass eyes above my bed.
My compass needle has lost your polarity
there's just a crude representation of pain
I will plant this seed you gave me, in Lethe;
The River of Forgetfulness on its grey shore.
A watery landscape without vanishing point.
Where a white heron will weep tears of sorrow,
like a human to feed hope's tender shoots.
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 4:31 AM UTC
Pharmacist with the funny face
I’m not sure how the lines were etched
and set in place across a severe brow
like storms had raged and winters chill
had set the frozen expression
into an acid dipped contour.
Each time I went with a prescription
to collect remedies for a cough and cold
a limp here
a sore there
some racing bp charts
an erring heart muscle.
His face remained stoic.
His face alone would frighten me
as pale as death he looked at me
over the rimmed glasses
and just that one second longer
than necessary.
My guilt soared. I felt like an addict
come into store to fetch
a high kick of something
suspicion hidden under the GPs scrawl.
I dared to look back
flushing red at his store.
It became a battle of the blush.
Twice I won
And never went back for a whole six months
Is he the guy that protects our streets
from the throaty lozenge
that may contain crack *******
hidden in its entrails? I dont know
but I always felt he had a secret sleeve
from where he pulled out those potions!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 2 months ago
Jul 3, 2014
Jul 3, 2014 at 5:21 PM UTC
**Buzzard, eagle, falcon, hawk,
Tiger, cheetah, lion, leopard,
panther, cougar, wild cat
intense all these predators are,
in carnal love and the war for dominance.
Each has characteristic hunting ways,
in day time prowling, plain beasts, they remain,
at sunset , each springs up, party time starts.
Birds of prey in silence watch from above
and find the right target, at a time that suits.
No endearments, in love or in games,
only body speaks of desires or warnings
Swift expression of demand, quick strike,
overpower and make the other surrender.
Throaty growls hurting silence of the forest
double as their sparse love language.
Hunters can never be lovers, their actions speak,
they demand, commandeer, force to surrender.**
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 9:13 AM UTC
He was the perfect height for her.
Tall enough that her head fell
Right tight under his sculpted chin
But not so tall that he was called "giant".
She was the perfect shape for him.
Not so skinny that he worried
About breaking her bones with a hug,
But curvy in all the places
That made him say a throaty "whoa".
She was a bookworm who loved TV.
He was a chef who loved Mac and Cheese.
They both adored animals,
Though he might have loved reptiles just a little too much.
And they both hated politics,
Though she might have set fire
To one too many campaign signs.
They argued about music, money, and kids.
They debated the merits of dancing in the rain.
They held hands in the moonlight,
And kissed at midday.
They grew old together and never strayed
Too far from the home they had built.
Then one day his chin wasn't high enough
For her head to fit snuggly below.
Her dresses, though comely,
No longer made him say "whoa".
But they still held hands and kissed
And remembered the days of their youth
When they were still learning
What being perfect for each other meant.
It wasn't until the night her heart gave out,
That she realized how he was perfect for her.
It wasn't his charm and dashing good looks,
Or his witty retorts and clever touchés,
But the simple fact
That through all of the years,
He loved her,
And that made him perfect for her.
It wasn't until she took her last breath,
That he understood how perfect she'd been.
She was perfect not because of her curves,
Her smile, her laugh, or her intelligence.
She was perfect for him because she loved him.
They'd been perfect in each other's eyes
Because love is blind.
And sometimes that's not a bad thing.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 5:14 PM UTC
This morning breakfast was two coconut macaroons
and a novelty- sized pecan pie.
All from the cafeteria.
When you’re going it alone, it’s the small things.
I can still hear the echoes of sleep as it recedes,
8AM, throaty yelps - panic -
and it slurps down the drain.
**** I’d give anything for a drain snake.
**** I’d give anything for black coffee
and a hood on this ******* coat.
Just above the below and below the upper,
I’m hovering somewhere in midfield.
But we didn’t cover this coordinate system in geography,
or what to do when you’re drowning
in waves of self-righteousness and the desire to be hip.
I need that hood. And probably new shoes.
When your roommate is an egg-shaped vampire
optimism can be hard to come by.
Her munching marks the stroke of midnight,
and I reach for the sleeping pills.
Oh for the perfumed winds of personal space.
Oh for the prairies of carpet and private bathrooms.
Oh to have hot water at 9PM.
Sing sweetly of home ye golden-thighed youths.
Feb 28, 2013
Feb 28, 2013 at 11:44 PM UTC
You were in a tail-spin, (You remember?)
Of course you do, endlessly falling,
Churning dark clouds for company,
Every silver-lining has a cloud.
So I reached right in, (you were so blind.)
Placed your trembling hand on the controls,
Although, you did not trust me, (did you?)
Not at first, although with good cause,
Because you were dizzy, disorientated.
But slowly, ever so slowly, we relaxed,
Pulled you out of the dive, up and away,
Banking, climbing, power ramping up,
Juddering through the stutter-stall,
Until we were purring, a throaty growl.
A big cat in a poorly constructed cage,
Bursting free, guided by rainbows,
Flickering smile insinuating itself upon your face,
(So lovely) on your beautiful lips.
Without really noticing, (smooth as silk)
We coasted along in open skies,
Rah, French kissing the gentle swell of the sea,
Transforming everything into a mirror,
Reflections captured in burnished bronze,
Can I release your hand now? (don’t gasp)
Yes, my love, you are flying again.
© Paul Chafer 2014
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 10:40 AM UTC
When the crumbling pastries cry
When the daises collide
When the lavender divides and conquers
You will find me
Amongst the flaming embers
For I am not a politician
But someone who follows her pleas
Bidding adieu to me and you
Bidding goodbye to what it could be like
Throaty syrups and palm tree queens
Margaritas and smoke screens
I'll take your scotch over my whiskey
I'll take your crumbling words over the mystery
Satisfaction guaranteed
Hundred percent real cotton
Moreover production
Label, label, label
*** on the beach
Let me be,
let me be,
oh, let me be.
Catastrophe.
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 11:05 AM UTC
He's gone but he's everywhere.
In the passenger seat, in my bedroom walls, in the music sheet strewn over the floor and in the songs he wrote; he's in my favorite books and in the ****** films over the DVD player; He's in our whispered secrets and Post-It notes, that from now on will be only mine to own. He's in my sunny days and stormy nights, in 3 am phone calls and throaty laughs. He's in pointless conversations I couldn't seem to ignore and now in the silence that fills my house every time I come home.
He's in my dreams and in the way I used to smile.
But most of all, he's in my heart, and I can't say goodbye.
Feb 8, 2022
Feb 8, 2022 at 7:23 AM UTC
The audience, silent, took a breath in unison
Included in the orchestra was every instrument imaginable
Banhus and Gadulkas played folk and polkas
The brutish brass, bodyguards and protectors of stringed melodies
Included in the orchestra was every instrument imaginable
A concert harp, plucked by fingers long, smooth and sharp
The brutish brass, bodyguards and protectors of the woodwind class
Saxophones provided a melancholy lilt, the timp was traditionally built
A concert harp, stroked by running fingers, smooth and sharp
Every sharp and flat note was passed through the throaty reeds of oboes
Saxophones reminiscent of ‘jive’, the timp in its size had nowhere to hide
This exhibition of musical traditions played late into evening with no intermissions
Every sharp and flat note accounted for, motifs carried whispers of folklore
Banhus and Gadulkas, swapped stories with bassoons and bagpipes
The exhibition had finished, piano keys rested, every note has its operatic death
The audience, silent, took a breath in unison
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 8:56 PM UTC
An almost stillness came about as she strode into my door,
like breath itself refused to move,
fearful of touching her mysterious beauty
But her obsidian eyes betrayed her.
Sharp and gleaming,
with a silver sheen
she looked at me,
and I knew…
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Molten lava spilled forth from her mouth, melting our clocks—
eighteen hundred nightmares compressed in two hours.
Long hand moving forward, as the short hand moved backward
How can memories persist in such an acrid life?
She spoke of a beast in the guise of a man,
one who ravaged innocence with the flick of a click
A coward that collected milk teeth for hardened bones
of other ***** beasts with no spine
That throaty tenderness when she spoke,
sprinkled crystal seeds of frustration in me
She says she loathed him, denied she loved him,
but her obsidian eyes betrayed her
There she was, a bud he plucked from the nuns’ garden
He grafted then he pruned her,
spreading her pollen, wafting her scent
yet folding her petals to himself
Caterpillars feeding upon her leaves,
she lets them devour her,
yet once they are wrapped in their cocoons to sleep,
she stabs them with her thorns.
Tears then slid down from her midnight lace eyes
and it was all I could do to catch them
She said she was weary of curtailing butterflies,
of tearing their wings before they can even fly
I had to ask, how many… how many winged gems?
She lifted her sleeves, and showed me her scars
One ugly mark for each innocent child plunged deep,
my heart getting slashed at least three hundred a beat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A certain stillness came about as I strode into her door,
like fear itself refused to move,
letting breath touch her mysterious beauty for the last time....
Her obsidian eyes had betrayed her.
Sharp and gleaming,
with a silver sheen
I looked at the knife beside her.
Maroon-mapped sheets, a stunted womb.
Strains of Bon Iver’s “Flume”
flit past the sighing air like a butterfly,
and I knew…
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 6:11 AM UTC
my only dream now
to return to the old preppy garments
and the boisterous hallway
with friendly arms around my neck
breathing the whiff of boisterous energy
to feel the brotherly armor
the friendly kiss of peace
the high jinks
the giggling and throaty beats of husky youths
the naive maturity of free thinkers
filled with optimistic hopes...
Save! what a misery it is to know
to know that my juvenile years
can never return to me.
I pity thyself.
Oh how quickly time fades!
but memos forever remain.
I was only an invisible spectator.
Aug 14, 2020
Aug 14, 2020 at 2:11 PM UTC
The leaves dance for the breeze,
birds hop and glide from tree to tree.
Cicadas throaty song and the crickets cracking chirps,
the vibrations sent into my ear
in a humming tornado swirl.
Life moves with ease, if you let it.
A memory recalled and the scene brought back
found in the sleek motion of a pouncing cat.
Shown to forethought, brought under the light
a recollection lost to the wind
lit in hollow tones of hazy purple.
Nuzzled between the layers in those forgotten days,
Life will pass with ease, if you let it.
Turn turn turn,
the globe on it's rotating limb it turns.
Light shines, line fades,
time aches but quickens its pace.
The flame it should burn the blurred heat
rises in mist all around,
I can't i can't i can't
feel the flame forming, lashing at my feet.
The shoreline night breeze sends my bones
shivering and knocking and aching,
can someone tell me why
the horizon will not stop shaking?
A look above,
breath found within the shining eye
of the crowded moon, behind a blooming star
their retreating dance in tempo with the lights
as they shake and dim.
Clear and vacant eyes,
Cleared out and left to rot
in the twisting tumbling weeds
of memories you thought you had forgot.
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 5:15 PM UTC
*Bending and kneeling
with discomfort
pinning and marking..
coaxing a key from a
recalcitrant machine..
a later discovery
the key was malformed..
An elderly Chinese couple
communicating with gestures
simple throaty sounds
These representatives of
other older world..
An island of survival
in our ocean of plenty..
An afternoon snapshot
only surface impressions
and mystery of work
and years...*
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 12:55 AM UTC