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Megan Milligan Aug 2011
I. Shining Armor

To all those would-be knights in shining armore:
Make sure you have a goodly supply of silver polish on your person
Because this woman is sick and tired
Of all the tarnish she keeps running into.

Really.

Fakeness gets real old, real quick.

I ‘m looking for a man with manners, grace, respect and class.
Not someone who’ll ultimately turn out to be an ***.
I’m not looking for too much I think.
In fact, I’d given up looking at all
Because the lot of them weren’t worth the flesh
God poured their sorry souls into.

Then, you came along,
Swept me off my feet with your Leo hurricane-force personality.
Fire sign burning through my resolves and inhibitions
Until there was nothing left
But trembling and desires and hidden fantasies

But I thought I saw something behind that solid wall of sexuality
A dark knight in shining armor
Intelligence in every timbered vibration fo your baritone voice,
Smooth like Barry white,
****, I thought, you are the whole package!
Family man, gentleman, talented artistic man
Man who said women were to be respected
As they were God’s gift.

How many men, afterall, would walk you to the bus,
Stand in front of you
So the sun didn’t glare in your face, facing west.
A glowing halo surrounded your head.
My angel, mon amour
My knight in shining armor.


II. Tarnish

Fast forward to today.
Man up,
Or move on out of my life.
I’ve waited a long time
For someone with manners, grace, respect, and class.
I’m not going to waste my time
Waiting on as ***.
Not that you’ve been one, mon amour,
But I’m starting to see a little tarnish on your shining armor.

I try to be up front,
Give you the 411 on what’s going on
Is it too much to expect no less out of a relationship?
Honesty, communication
Lay everything on the line so no misunderstandings.
Maybe I’m setting myself up,
Blinded by the shine of your armor
And your promises spoken.
Soothed, hypnotized by the timbered vibration of your baritone voice.
Smooth like Barry White.
Okay, one more time, I will trust you.
On your knight’s honor,
My knight in slightly tarnished armor.


III. Tinfoil

I’m looking for a man
With manners, grace, respect, and class
Not someone who’ll ultimately turn out to be an ***,
And you crossed that line.
The shine is gone,
And no amount of silver polish is gonna wipe clean your tarnish.

You see, there are two things I hold sacred in relationships:
Honesty and keeping promises,
Both of which you failed miserably at as a man.
Yeah I set myself up for a fall as well,
Expecting no less than what I put in myself.

But what good is being together
If you’re the only one putting for any effort.
A relationship is supposed to be give and take.
Not giving and giving and giving and giving
And getting nothing in return
But a bad player’s broken promises
And a broken heart.

Gum stuck on the bottom of my shoe
Has more integrity than you do.
You lied to me.
You put things off.
I would’ve had more respect for you
If you gave me straight talk about flings
Or things like “This isn’t working out”
Instead of sweet talk that left a bad aftertaste in my mouth like saccharin.
The only part of you that ever told me the truth
Was more than happy to stand at attention
And speak volumes
Without saying a word.

And speaking of “not speaking,”
You know what really takes the cake?
You didn’t even have the mother-******* *****
To tell me yourself.
I had to find out from someone else.

Some say more shall be revealed.
Boy, were my eyes opened to the fact
That sometimes a knight in shinign armor
Is sometimes just a ****** wrapped in tinfoil.

So, to all those would-be knights in shining armore:
Make sure you have a goodly supply of silver polish on your person
Because this woman is sick and tired
Of all the tarnish she keeps running into.

Really.

Fakeness gets real old, real quick.


IV. Press Seven**

Seven.
Seven is my lucky number.
It helped me to slam the door on your sorry ***
And a chapter in my life I don’t care to re-read.

How dare you
Call up one day out of the blue
And drop a message on my voicemail.
The second I heard “Hi,  it’s (insert name here)”
DELETE!
Seven dumped your *** faster than you dumped mine
Through a third-party representative.

I don’t want to hear any “Hi, How ya doin’s”
I don’t want to hear any reasons
Or excuses
Or glossing-overs of what you did.

I wasn’t kidding when I said
Fakeness gets real old, real quick,
And that goes for ***** like you.
I may be a big woman,
But I’m not the Big Easy.
I’m a woman of respect
And dignity.

So don’t bother e-mailing me.
Don’t bother calling me.
Delete me out of your rolodex
And go trolling down Fourth Street
If you want nothing but ***.

****!
Never did pressing 7 to delete you
Feel so ****** good.
© 8/23/2010
(rev. 5/26/2011, added part 4)
Robert C Howard Jul 2016
They gathered by Williamson Road at sun-up
      from neighboring spreads across the Tioga valley.
They came with carts laden with lumber stacks -
      with saws, adzes, hammers and sundry tools.

They gathered with the homesteaders bond.
      to co-build their neighbor's' dreams.

Sweet music of community echoed off the hills.
     Chisels clanged into rock, shaping the foundation,
saws sang into boards to frame a timbered skeleton.
     The staccato syncopation of hammers fastened walls
that soon would shelter plowshares, stock and grain.
      A smithy leaned over his fire and forge -
chiming iron into sturdy latches and hinges.

     Children scurried about mixing squeals and laughter
with exuberant fetching and lifting whenever called.
    
In two short passings of the sun the deed was done
      and a handsome new barn, decked out in a wash of red
was silhouetted tall and proud against the fading light.

Homesteaders gathered at a celebration table
      to share a hearty meal adorned by the music
of fiddles, grateful smiles and easy laughter.
  
Then one by one they steered their wagons home
      gazing back at what their labors had wrought -
knowing to the depth of their communal souls
      that we are more together than we are apart

Listen up, America!  This is the music of community.
      We are more together than we are apart.

*© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard
timber habitats are vanishing, on the Earth's mass
timber habitats are vanishing, on the Earth's mass
bulldozers and axes, lethal their mix
bulldozers and axes, lethal their mix
on the Earth's mass, bulldozers and axes
vanishing timber habitats, lethal their mix

the number one priority, where is the preserving and conserving
the number one priority, where is the preserving and conserving
tree dwelling creatures, served eviction from their homes
tree dwelling creatures, served eviction from their homes
preserving and conserving, tree dwelling creatures homes
from eviction, the number one priority

tree felling goes on unabated, wooded residencies destroyed
tree feeling goes on unabated, wooded residencies destroyed
profits to be ever reaped, satiating the logger's greed
profits to be ever reaped, satiating the logger's greed
unabated the logger's tree felling goes on
satiating greed destroyed, wooded residencies reaped

wood residencies destroyed, on the Earth's mass
served eviction from their homes, tree dwelling creatures
timbered habitats are vanishing, the number one priority
profits to be ever reaped ,bulldozers and axes lethal their mix
tree felling goes on unabated, satiating the logger's greed
where is the preserving and conserving?
--To Elizabeth Robins Pennell


'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!'--Fantasio.

Once on a time
There was a little boy:  a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
Of magic--O, so magical it filled
His life with visionary pomps
Processional!  And Powers
Passed with him where he passed.  And Thrones
And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
Pavilioned jealously, and hid
As in the dusk, profound,
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.--

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
A flickering ****** of memory that floats
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
And thirty dead years deep,
Antic in girlish broideries
And skirts and silly shoes with straps
And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks
Plain in the shadow of a church
(St. Michael's:  in whose brazen call
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),
Sedate for all his haste
To be at home; and, nestled in his arm,
Inciting still to quiet and solitude,
Boarded in sober drab,
With small, square, agitating cuts
Let in a-top of the double-columned, close,
Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .
What but that blessed brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,
And ghouls, and genies--O, so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!
In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade
The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk--
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms--
Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!

Old friends I had a-many--kindly and grim
Familiars, cronies quaint
And goblin!  Never a Wood but housed
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings.  No Brook
But had his nunnery
Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,
To cabin in his grots, and pace
His lilied margents.  Every lone Hillside
Might open upon Elf-Land.  Every Stalk
That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs
You climbed beyond the clouds, and found
The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged
And drowsy, from his great oak chair,
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,
Called for his Faery Harp.  And in it flew,
And, perching on the kitchen table, sang
Jocund and jubilant, with a sound
Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals
The shy thrush at mid-May
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,
In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,
For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,
And mocked him call for call!

I could not pass
The half-door where the cobbler sat in view
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,
In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,
Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know
Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched
His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists
And elbows.  In the rich June fields,
Where the ripe clover drew the bees,
And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind
Lolled his half-holiday away
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own,
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son
On his white horse along the leafy lanes;
For at his stirrup linked and ran,
Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped
From wall to wall above the espaliers,
But in the bravest tops
That market-town, a town of tops, could show:
Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail
A banner flaunted in disdain
Of human stratagems and shifts:
King over All the Catlands, present and past
And future, that moustached
Artificer of fortunes, ****-in-Boots!
Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing
Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,
And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases--
Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part
A faery chamber hazily seen
And hazily figured--on dark afternoons
And windy nights was visiting of the best.
Then, too, the pelt of hoofs
Out in the roaring darkness told
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm
Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit,
Between his hell-born Hounds.
And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,
Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls
Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;
For, listening, I could help him play
His wonderful game,
In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.

But what were these so near,
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought
The run of Ali Baba's Cave
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,'
With gold to measure, peck by peck,
In round, brown wooden stoups
You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time
Made you Aladdin's friend at school,
Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp
In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair
For all the embrowning scars in their white *******
Went labouring under some dread ordinance,
Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,
Strange Curs that cried as they,
Till there was never a Black ***** of all
Your consorting but might have gone
Spell-driven miserably for crimes
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,
While you lay wondering and acold,
Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon
Queen Labe, abominable and dear,
Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,
Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk),
And muttered certain words you could not hear;
And there! a living stream,
The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags
And cresses, glittered and sang
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness,
Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .

I was--how many a time!--
That Second Calendar, Son of a King,
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined,
Pausing at one mysterious door,
To pry no closer, but content his soul
With his kind Forty.  Yet I could not rest
For idleness and ungovernable Fate.
And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame
(That wonder-working word!),
Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,
And soaring, soaring on
From air to air, came charging to the ground
Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,
And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled
Flicked at me with his tail,
And left me blinded, miserable, distraught
(Even as I was in deed,
When doctors came, and odious things were done
On my poor tortured eyes
With lancets; or some evil acid stung
And wrung them like hot sand,
And desperately from room to room
Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),
To get to Bagdad how I might.  But there
I met with Merry Ladies.  O you three--
Safie, Amine, Zobeide--when my heart
Forgets you all shall be forgot!
And so we supped, we and the rest,
On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,
Almonds, pistachios, citrons.  And Haroun
Laughed out of his lordly beard
On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three
For all their Mossoul habits).  And outside
The Tigris, flowing swift
Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;
The vast, blue night
Was murmurous with peris' plumes
And the leathern wings of genies; words of power
Were whispering; and old fishermen,
Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore
Dead loveliness:  or a prodigy in scales
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold:
Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,
In durance under potent charactry
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was glassed
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint,
Bewildering angles, so would Life
Flash light on light back on the Book; and both
Were changed.  Once in a house decayed
From better days, harbouring an errant show
(For all its stories of dry-rot
Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax,
Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),
I wandered; and no living soul
Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared
Upon them staring--staring.  Till at last,
Three sets of rafters from the streets,
I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,
With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,
Guarding the door:  and there, in a bedroom-set,
Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,
With an aspect of frills
And dimities and dishonoured privacy
That made you hanker and hesitate to look,
A Woman with her litter of Babes--all slain,
All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes
Staring--still staring; so that I turned and ran
As for my neck, but in the street
Took breath.  The same, it seemed,
And yet not all the same, I was to find,
As I went up!  For afterwards,
Whenas I went my round alone--
All day alone--in long, stern, silent streets,
Where I might stretch my hand and take
Whatever I would:  still there were Shapes of Stone,
Motionless, lifelike, frightening--for the Wrath
Had smitten them; but they watched,
This by her melons and figs, that by his rings
And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,
The Painted Eyes insufferable,
Now, of those grisly images; and I
Pursued my best-beloved quest,
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.
So the night fell--with never a lamplighter;
And through the Palace of the King
I groped among the echoes, and I felt
That they were there,
Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,
Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far
A Voice!  And in a little while
Two tapers burning!  And the Voice,
Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was--whose?
Whose but Zobeide's,
The lady of my heart, like me
A True Believer, and like me
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles
Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall
A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew
Swiftly . . . and grew.  Tearing their beards,
The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,
Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,
Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand,
And, turning broadside on,
As the most iron would, was haled and ******
Nearer, and nearer yet;
And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps
Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now
That swallowed sea and sky; and then,
Anchors and nails and bolts
Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,
A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides
Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,
A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal
About the waters; and her crew
Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left
To drown.  All the long night I swam;
But in the morning, O, the smiling coast
Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike,
Skirted with shelving sands!  And a great wave
Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive.
So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,
And, faring inland, in a desert place
I stumbled on an iron ring--
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:
When, scenting a trap-door,
I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade
Stuck into wood.  And then,
The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,
Sunk in the naked rock!  The cool, clean vault,
So neat with niche on niche it might have been
Our beer-cellar but for the rows
Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars)
Full to the wide, squat throats
With gold-dust, but a-top
A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things
I knew for olives!  And far, O, far away,
The Princess of China languished!  Far away
Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief
Of Eunuchs and the privilege
Of going out at night
To play--unkenned, majestical, secure--
Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped
Like Tigris shore for shore!  Haply a Ghoul
Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,
A thighbone in his fist, and glared
At supper with a Lady:  she who took
Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.
Or you might stumble--there by the iron gates
Of the Pump Room--underneath the limes--
Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,
Just as the civil Genie laid him down.
Or those red-curtained panes,
Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily
Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,
Might turn a caravansery's, wherein
You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,
And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,
You'd not have given away
For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous
You had that dark and disleaved afternoon
Escaped on a roc's claw,
Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!
And all the blissful while
The schoolboy satchel at your hip
Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze
Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn
From over Caspian:  yea, the Chief Jewellers
Of Tartary and the bazaars,
Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.--

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart
The magian East:  thus the child eyes
Spelled out the wizard message by the light
Of the sober, workaday hours
They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass
In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind
In ancient Severn's arm,
Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,
Whose floating populace of ships--
Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,
Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters--brought
To her very doorsteps and geraniums
The scents of the World's End; the calls
That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride
Like fire on some high errand of the race;
The irresistible appeals
For comradeship that sound
Steadily from the irresistible sea.
Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,
Telling itself anew
In terms of living, labouring life,
Took on the colours, busked it in the wear
Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance,
The Angel-Playmate, raining down
His golden influences
On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,
Walked with me arm in arm,
Or left me, as one bediademed with straws
And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find
His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,
Sends the same silver dews
Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies
On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound
Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk
Sullenly smoking over a row
Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air
A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings
Of hurtling, tipping trams)--
As on the amorous nightingales
And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers
Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears,
Like listed lightnings.
Samarcand!
That name of names!  That star-vaned belvedere
Builded against the Chambers of the South!
That outpost on the Infinite!
And behold!
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide
Might overtake you:  for one fringe,
One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one
Floats founded vague
In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm
And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,
The promise of wistful hills--
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.
Everyone has an opinion, my son.
And their words will push and shove you
To the left and to the right,
Towards earth and towards heaven.

Should others be your root which holds you to reality,
You will have an anchor which sways with the tides,
A bridge timbered upon clouds,
And a house founded upon shifting sands.

Thus to pursue what is True and Good,
You must trust your own eyes.
For though they will lie from time to time
Another’s eyes cannot fit within your sockets
I added the schizophrenia tag, because being a schizophrenic I struggle with this
The vines have turned the color of the season —
as red as the wine their grapes will spill.
I peer back up the hillside into the circling sun,
an infinite swath of yellow. Below it surges
Homer’s wine-dark sea, repeatedly, endlessly, effortlessly
spreading. Except the sea is never red in Greece or Italy,
or even in France, where I stand amid a sea of wine-red leaves,
in silence, under the sun, holding back the flood of invaders below.

From the crumbling wall of the vineyard,
I survey the village of Riquewihr in all its medieval splendor,
gorged with tourists like an unfortunate goose
gagging on grain forced down its gullet:
foie gras for the shopkeepers, who crowd the cobbled courtyard
in all its chaos and cacophony.
“Sample a macaroon for free under the ramparts.”
“Buy a reproduction of a one-of-a-kind watercolor of the bell tower,
built in 1291. (Only 400 Euros for the original),” the artist says.
“Reserve it now for Christmas.”

His stocking cap needs cleaning, I think.
I eye the village fountain, the half-timbered shops, the claustrophobic
stone houses, brightly painted, squeezed into walls like tiny fortresses.
The artist tells me how hard it is to make a living —
the global economy his impenetrable wall, which holds back a flood
of buyers from Germany, China, New York.

I decline his offer to buy and climb the steep hill out of town,
the wine-dark hill of the vineyard.
This is what it means to inherit the world:
to stand apart, high, distant, above the sea
of other tourists, just like yourself, who yearn to stand apart,
just like yourself, laden with bulky guidebooks,
just like yourself, looking for the perfect souvenir, just like yourself,
the one that will sit perfectly on their mantle. Just like yourself,
they seek a memento that will remember for them — remember
all they could have had if only they had had the village to themselves.
If only you had had the village to yourself, to make it your own.

On this sunny afternoon, the village is my own — for a moment,
from a distance, awash in gray-blue shadow. Only the vineyard beams:
isolated, fecund, teeming with dreams; ever gaining on the harvest;
angling closer to the giant wine press that will spew the scarlet juice
at my feet, the earth turned the color of blood.

I resist the urge to pluck a baby cluster of grapes, nestled safely
beneath a leafy wave of this wine-dark sea, these purple berries
springing from the ground: so many earthy bubbles, born to burst.
Le terroir in French: The dirt makes all the difference.

A handful of soil would prove the perfect souvenir, nest-ce pas?
sitting pretty on my mantle. The dust and debris would blow away
day by day, like ashes spilled from a funerary urn,
the sacred remains of my travels.

Let me be buried, then, in memory of the fertile furrows of Alsace.
Let me push up this hillside, along its ample paths of abundance;
its ripening rows of fruit; its wine-red passageways through leaves
and vines, steep and luminous; the sea of blood yet to be pressed
from the soon-to-be-crimson grapes.

“Does this vast vineyard hold any secret worth journeying halfway
around the world to find?” That is the question I scribble in the dirt.
“Does this village? Does this vision? Does this ancient, failing wall?”
Even if the answer is “No, no, no,” I shall reply, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Yes, let me be buried in Alsatian soil as a lasting souvenir.
Yes, let me lie here, as I stand: free and upright,
lighted by the autumn sun, unchanging, set apart
to revel in the marvel of red blood seeping into the soil
.
Yes, let me make this stained patch of dirt my own.

The vines have turned the color of the season —
wine-red, wine-dark, blood-red.
And I have turned the color of the vines,
in silence, under the sun, holding back the flood.
God had called us, and we came;
  Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor’s house,
  Open to us, bereft.

Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
  And ’twas God who walked ahead;
Yet I wept along the road,
  Wanting my own house instead.

Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
  “All you things my eyes have kissed,
Fare you well!  We meet no more,
  Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

Weary wings that rise and fall
  All day long above the fire!”—
Red with heat was every wall,
  Rough with heat was every wire—

“Fare you well, you little winds
  That the flying embers chase!
Fare you well, you shuddering day,
  With your hands before your face!

And, ah, blackened by strange blight,
  Or to a false sun unfurled,
Now forevermore goodbye,
  All the gardens in the world!

On the windless hills of Heaven,
  That I have no wish to see,
White, eternal lilies stand,
  By a lake of ebony.

But the Earth forevermore
  Is a place where nothing grows,—
Dawn will come, and no bud break;
  Evening, and no blossom close.

Spring will come, and wander slow
  Over an indifferent land,
Stand beside an empty creek,
  Hold a dead seed in her hand.”

God had called us, and we came,
  But the blessed road I trod
Was a bitter road to me,
  And at heart I questioned God.

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all
  That the heart would most desire,
Held Earth naught save souls of sinners
  Worth the saving from a fire?

Withered grass,—the wasted growing!
  Aimless ache of laden boughs!”
Little things God had forgotten
  Called me, from my burning house.

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all
  That the eye could ask to see,
All the things I ever knew
  Are this blaze in back of me.”

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all
  That the ear could think to lack,
All the things I ever knew
  Are this roaring at my back.”

It was God who walked ahead,
  Like a shepherd to the fold;
In his footsteps fared the weak,
  And the weary and the old,

Glad enough of gladness over,
  Ready for the peace to be,—
But a thing God had forgotten
  Was the growing bones of me.

And I drew a bit apart,
  And I lagged a bit behind,
And I thought on Peace Eternal,
  Lest He look into my mind:

And I gazed upon the sky,
  And I thought of Heavenly Rest,—
And I slipped away like water
  Through the fingers of the blest!

All their eyes were fixed on Glory,
  Not a glance brushed over me;
“Alleluia!  Alleluia!”
  Up the road,—and I was free.

And my heart rose like a freshet,
  And it swept me on before,
Giddy as a whirling stick,
  Till I felt the earth once more.

All the earth was charred and black,
  Fire had swept from pole to pole;
And the bottom of the sea
  Was as brittle as a bowl;

And the timbered mountain-top
  Was as naked as a skull,—
Nothing left, nothing left,
  Of the Earth so beautiful!

“Earth,” I said, “how can I leave you?”
  “You are all I have,” I said;
“What is left to take my mind up,
  Living always, and you dead?”

“Speak!” I said, “Oh, tell me something!
  Make a sign that I can see!
For a keepsake!  To keep always!
  Quick!—before God misses me!”

And I listened for a voice;—
  But my heart was all I heard;
Not a screech-owl, not a loon,
  Not a tree-toad said a word.

And I waited for a sign;—
  Coals and cinders, nothing more;
And a little cloud of smoke
  Floating on a valley floor.

And I peered into the smoke
  Till it rotted, like a fog:—
There, encompassed round by fire,
  Stood a blue-flag in a bog!

Little flames came wading out,
  Straining, straining towards its stem,
But it was so blue and tall
  That it scorned to think of them!

Red and thirsty were their tongues,
  As the tongues of wolves must be,
But it was so blue and tall—
  Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!

All my heart became a tear,
  All my soul became a tower,
Never loved I anything
  As I loved that tall blue flower!

It was all the little boats
  That had ever sailed the sea,
It was all the little books
  That had gone to school with me;

On its roots like iron claws
  Rearing up so blue and tall,—
It was all the gallant Earth
  With its back against a wall!

In a breath, ere I had breathed,—
  Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!—
I was kneeling at its side,
  And it leaned its head on me!

Crumbling stones and sliding sand
  Is the road to Heaven now;
Icy at my straining knees
  Drags the awful under-tow;

Soon but stepping-stones of dust
  Will the road to Heaven be,—
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
  Reach a hand and rescue me!

“There—there, my blue-flag flower;
  Hush—hush—go to sleep;
That is only God you hear,
  Counting up His folded sheep!

Lullabye—lullabye—
  That is only God that calls,
Missing me, seeking me,
  Ere the road to nothing falls!

He will set His mighty feet
  Firmly on the sliding sand;
Like a little frightened bird
  I will creep into His hand;

I will tell Him all my grief,
  I will tell Him all my sin;
He will give me half His robe
  For a cloak to wrap you in.

Lullabye—lullabye—”
  Rocks the burnt-out planet free!—
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
  Reach a hand and rescue me!

Ah, the voice of love at last!
  Lo, at last the face of light!
And the whole of His white robe
  For a cloak against the night!

And upon my heart asleep
  All the things I ever knew!—
“Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord,
  For a flower so tall and blue?”

All’s well and all’s well!
  Gay the lights of Heaven show!
In some moist and Heavenly place
  We will set it out to grow.
Nat Lipstadt Jun 2023
Fog Happens

Yup. Not profound, even Jung, Kant and Freud,
wouldn’t deny their eyes, would no doubt disagree
with symbolic, philosophical implications, and the
head banging ramifications for the immediacy of
the spiritual impact while driving in this grey ****.

Fog differs every time, and on an island, that’s for
**** sure. Today’s incarnation, the fog comes over
the water, but respects the man-made, timbered,
bulkhead, so the yard, with its circus of ravens, crows,
and other invisible birds, insects, rabbits, is visible,
but absent the inhabitants who are smarter-than-humans,
they remain aboded thinking, only stupid humans believe
they can navigate and forage, in a fog penetrating  in air
that is 97% humidity and 100% peas soup thick skinned.

The time? Of course.

It’s 7:36 AM on the East Coast, and beyond the lawn lies a brackish bay that will lead you to the Atlantic and north to the Titanic, direction Newfoundland. Not enough info to geo tag me, but those who know me, knowledgeable in my early mornings  scribblings, know my whereabouts, my telephone number. Do you?

Fog Happens to everyone and at random intervals, Nope. Not thinking of the brain clouds of ordinary Lethologica  and Lethonomia. (Sunday lazy so just look it up and say out loud, gotta remember them words and laugh out loud cause you ain’t gotta a prayer.)

Fog Happens

in the heart, spreading north to the consciousness, and the lethargy of movement impeded by the lighthouse bells tolling “danger is about,” our light stolen, but you need to know, you’re perilously close to danger. Any action taken when heart-fogged can have awful consequences so stick close to bed, yank out your tablet, write a poem, listen to sad love  songs on that Pandora Station, or send GIPHYs and emojis to your six year old granddaughter who is 108 miles to the west of where you both hide beneath coverlets, and laugh out loud with her like the bells chiming outside, and that helps move that heart~fog hanging low, out to sea.

YUP.
Fog Happens
Fog Passes
Sun Jun 25
7:58 AM
@you-know-where
Jacqe Booth Feb 2010
I am cage fights with boys and girls alike
I am splintered hardwood floors
kneeling/crawling/hard working
indoor/outdoor
day/night.
I am balled fists
Open palms
I am Chains and
a footstool timbered from my back.
A rent boy with vices
I am violence/dicord/visceral
Bloodied and mean.
A machine built of sinew
made for binding/unbinding
lashing and flogging
I am a service receptacle
a boy built of honour
of instinctual intellect
of bruises and bandages
i am cut and torn
roped and worn.
Marshal Gebbie Aug 2023
Everything is BIG here.

Meals are big, bums are big, cars are huge and the skies are a million miles wide.

Janet and I are travelling in the Northwest of the United States of America, spending time with Boaz and Lisa in Idaho, Steve Yocum in Oregon and Greg and Linda in Washington State.

The trip is a "quickie" in that we are fitting one helluva lot into just three weeks duration.
Never in all my days have I seen such huge quantities of food served up in restaurant meals, plastic bags discarded, American flags fluttering and all the young, blonde girls in tattered, impossibly short cut offs and sleeveless tops talking loudly, incomprehensibly at a million miles an hour ......Just blows you away!!
Monstrous pickup trucks, Rams, Broncos, big V8s travelling the freeways continuously. Sheriffs, troopers and Road cops all wearing firearms on the hip, in their souped up pursuit vehicles parked on the roadside shoulder, eyeballing everyone as they pass, with a mean, accusatory glare.
Out on the range there is a million square miles of nothing but sage brush and basalt rock....and searing, baking heat.
114 degrees in the painted desert of Moab. Beautiful though with vaulting red sandstone cliffs and rearing stone arches against the blue-est of blue skies.
Standing pillars of ancient sedimentary rock born in depositions laid down in vast oceans of bygone eras, millions of years ago.

History is painted vast in this immensity. The gigantic and abrupt catastrophic inundation of a vast and deep inland sea, swelled suddenly by floodwaters of rivers diverted by lava flows from subterranean fissures....Unimaginable torrents abruptly released, gouging out ancient lava beds to create gigantic waterfalls and deep, sheer sided chasms.

Cascades that constituted the biggest river flow ever known in the history of the planet, washing away everything from the epicentre of the continent in Utah through Idaho to the Pacific ocean in the rugged coast of Oregon. Such was the Bonneville flood of 12,000 years ago illustrated today by the gigantic chasms created in the beds of basalt and rhyolitic larva throughout Idaho and the fields of massive, round, house sized boulders strewn from the floods origin near what is now, Salt Lake City in Utah to the coast in Oregon, a thousand kilometers away.

The two weeks stay with Boaz and Lisa just disappeared in a flash. They took us down to Moab painted desert, Zion National park, the Craters of the Moon, Monument National Park and up to Stanley and the Sawtooth mountains by the mighty Salmon river. Janet and I took advantage of a couple of push bikes hanging in the garage and spent most days cycling the local trails and visiting Starbucks for a celebratory cappuccino or two....Those bikes saved our bacon, walking trails in that heat was ******. Great hospitality enjoyed here. watched reruns of Sopranos on Boaz's 70 " SmartScreen TV and enjoyed Arnie's escape from postwar Austria to Mr Universe and fame and fortune @ Hollywood with Boaz whilst enjoying chilled margaritas in the hot tub.

The camaraderie of meeting an old mate of 45 years past, Steve Yocum of Oregon  a fellow writer and author. Both of us intent on shooting the breeze, putting the world to right. In some ways a sad exercise in that no longer can either of us make things right for with age upon us, neither has influence. We can huff n puff n blow the house down....but it seems, nobody pays the slightest bit of attention. The penalty of age is invisibility. The relief in it all is that, really, nobody actually gives a hoot!

Just two Old Dogs letting off steam..... it's rather cathartic actually! Thanks to Stevo, Ian and lovely Heidi for the accommodation, great hospitality and warmth.

The cool atmospheric relief of the serene and calm, Puget Sound in Seattle, Washington state gave welcome respite from the intense heat of the interior and the serenity of our cottage accommodations and startlingly beautiful garden surrounds. A forest of conifers and deciduous trees harboured gardens of blooming roses, hollyhocks and multihued cone flowers, emerald lawns carve swarths of sunlight in avenues of deep, green shade....a delight for the sunburnt brows of yesterday's heat.
Woken by the bassoon blast of the passing early morning ferry out in the waterway, to stroll out to sit at the very edge of the sandy, pebble beach and gentle surge of the deep, clear saline waters of the magnificent Puget Sound.
The peace of early morning crisp cool air, a seascape of moored fishing boats on mirrored waters, the distant Olympic range rearing to its' full 7,000 ft against a powder blue sky left us quite breathless with the utter beauty of it all....add to that a lovely breakfast offering of fresh berries, kiwifruit slices and yogurt and a chilled glass of fresh squeezed orange juice...and we absolutely, couldn't want for anything more. To Greg and Linda our love and thanks for giving up your beautiful bed, travelling us around beautiful Seattle and being our airline coach to and from Portland. We shall return the warm hospitality next time you hit NZ and Taranaki.

Vulcanism has dominated the terrain in Idaho, Montana, and Utah. Continental drift westward of the land mass has brought about a steady transference eastward of the massive geothermal hot spot which currently lies in Yellowstone park and which is the source of all volcanic activity within the park..
Idaho, in ancient times, wore the volcanic mantle of the region in having truly gigantic rhyolitic ash and magmatic eruptions. These cataclysmic eruptions emptied deep cavernous, subterranean magma chambers which collapsed under their own weight leaving vast circular calderas in the landscape. Subsequent plate tectonic activity caused deep faulting allowing huge flows of sticky magma to surge to the surface like searing hot black toothpaste, spreading across the plains obliterating all evidence of the rhyolite caulderas, surfacing the state, to this day, with millions of acres of hard black basaltic rock.
Here and there, rhyolite has wormed its way to the surface building gigantic domes, over the centuries these have weathered leaving statuesque, dramatic flat-topped mesa scattered across the landscape.
Altogether a truly unique and enthralling terrain for visitors to behold and one which reveals a dramatic insight to the volcanic and tectonic violence of the recent past and gives a definite air of mystique to the beholder.

In a land of 360 million people, supermarkets are downright huge...and they contain the spoils of the nation's plenty.
Acres of dazzling variety... and cheap by international standards. The very best of prime beefsteak, sides of pork, Alaskan cod freshly caught and displayed in rows of chilled enticing exhibit. Every possible vegetable and fresh picked fruit known to man in piled pyramids of brilliant, colourful display. Beautiful ornate furniture, beds, mattresses, tiers of car tyres of every conceivable brand and size, wheelbarrows, fertilizer, fresh flowers in mountainous display, ***** in barnlike chillers. Supermarket trolleys for giants..... and gird yourself for a marathon hike in collecting your basket of groceries...and give yourself half a day....you'll need it!

America has momentum, huge momentum. Across vast tracts of country lie networks of highway. Multilane concrete that tracks mile after mile carrying huge trucks with 40 tonne loads. Incessant trucks, one after another,  thundering along carrying the lifeblood of America, merchandise,  machinery, infrastructure, steel, timber and technology. Gigantic mobile freezers hauling food from the grower to the markets. Hauling excavators, harvesters,  bulldozers and giant Agricultural tractors. Night and day this massive source of production careers across the nation transporting the promise of America, the momentum which drives the Stars and Stripes onward, ever onward.

On the margins of the cities of Portland and Salem the unhoused gathered in squalid tent communities. In the beautiful city of Seattle I saw many down and out unshaven, untidy individuals with hopelessness in their eyes, pushing supermarket trolleys containing their sparse possessions. I drove through rural communities, some of which, reflected hardship and an air of despair. Run down dwellings in need of maintenance and repair, derelict rusty vehicles adorning the **** strewn frontages.
Not 20 kilometers away in Ketchum and Sun Valley Idaho the homes were palatial in grounds tended by gardeners and viticulturalists. Porsches and Range Rovers graced the ornate, rusticated porticoes. Wealth and privilege in evidence in every nuanced nook and cranny.
America is, indeed, a land of contrasts, a land of wealth, privilege, and plenty..... and yet a land that, somehow, tolerates and abides a fragile paucity which emblazons itself, embarrassingly, within the national profile.

On a hot day in Twin Falls, Idaho, I walked into a huge air-conditioned sporting goods store specifically to look at guns....and in the long glass cases there were hundreds of them. From snub nosed revolvers to Glocks, 38s, 45 caliber even western style Colt 45s and the ***** Harry Magnum with the long, blue gun barrel and classic, prominent foresight.
In the racks behind the counter are hung fully and semi-automatic rifles of myriad types...all available for sale providing the buyer has appropriate licensing.
In a land where mass shootings proliferate weekly, I ask myself....does this availability of lethal weaponry make sense?

The aching beauty of the mountain country in Northern Idaho, Oregon and Washington state cannot be overstated. The Sawtooth mountains, the Cascades, Mt Ranier, Mt Hood and the Olympic range. Ridgelines of towering conifers as far as the eye can see, waves of green deciduous running down to soft grassy clearings with boulder strewn, rushing streams and the cascade of plunging waterfalls. The magnificence of the natural beauty of this rugged, heavily timbered mountain country just defies description being far, far isolated from the attentions of man.

To happen upon this country from the far distant reaches of the South Pacific is a culture shock, to be suddenly exposed to the extreme largess. It is difficult to calibrate, hard to encompass, impossible to assimilate....but the people encountered warmed us with their generosity of spirit, their willingness to welcome travelling strangers into their homes....and, of course the invaluable time we spent with our family….and for these factors alone together with the huge magnificence that is this........
GRAND AMERICA.
We are truly, truly grateful.

Janet & Marshal
Foxglove@Taranaki.NZ
denuded of cover
she stands all alone
without a leaf
upon her timbered bones
above in sombre grey skies
an uncaring sun hides
winter's whipping wind
lashes her hide
there she shivers
for want of warm light
there she quivers
through the gelid days and nights
the bitter iciness
ever staying
with the freezing vetch
so cruelly parlaying
the end doth call
she dies
she dies
she dies
in winter's cold pall
Jordan N Dingle Apr 2018
“To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late
And how can man die better
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods”



Soft murmurs along the front line crackle like a broken prairie plough,
The maples and oaks snapping with
Every burst of the cannon.
Crested breaths choked out by
The ferocious blasts of this entrenched
Jungle.
Shrieks punctuate the deathly silence,
And sobers the divisions thirst for war.
I, a dead soul among the living.

The soft wind at night is the nefarious fingers of death,
Soaking the earth and ****** boughs
Of the old oaks with the veins
Of golden purity.

(I am standing on an eagles skull.)

I can hear the Rebel yell beyond the tree line,
BLASTING the barreling notion of liberty,
Stacked within our Union souls.

A Bundren coffin takes form in the mist beyond the wasteland.

My kin lay wait at home,
Shall I return one day and parade through pastures
And creeks until the days grow old
and so shall I.
With kin side by side.

My vacant mind floats off to distant lands along the
timbered forests of the Free North.


Orations from my Grandfather resonate like wind chimes
Rattling among the inner confines of my sanity,
Strewn images flash like the lines of Virginian regulars,
A sparse reminder of my ever so soon fate
In the Wilderness.
PK Wakefield Mar 2011
i4
did because i well jeez 10:23 farther steeper i'd was a outside 10:24 a junebug
is creaking on the well like a fine cylinder. it's because steeper or 10:27 clunking
a light of amiable is sort of. at 10:31 a common a cool the. into if.
        a very sorry long is diacriticly loose with the scab of lunging trees
by the barn 10:31:53 is . it's was almost because i did i well jeez
the june is a crimped fine determined juice. did it seem because or and a breif
i s haloed somewhat or creaking a junebug is big for by the stalls shuffling with legs in the sort of barn by the 10:36 it's gabled a bit. or does it seem a because well did i and meyou. pm well it were 10:37 and longest brown is seemingly. otherwise unmarked a phonetic element. by a 10:39PM leafing softly
  the scuttle a. unnerved little scraping. beneath or metatarsaled cadence a the grassed stripping earth went from the basest mouth of timbered certainly to the unskinniest blue. a vanity of wheels or because well did i jeez
K E Cummins Sep 2022
I’m trying to recall a poem or a prayer that I recited
while walking through the woods of my hometown.
It occurs to me that I’ll never get it back.
I suppose such things are meant to be transient,
spoken out loud and left to drift,
But I am determined to capture some of it.

So. Here in the woods
Branches droop heavy and black with berries.
I pluck to gather them and make of my hands
two cups from which saltwater spills.
I see a vision of the old and the new,
the here to come and the hereafter,
overlaid on the thick pine stumps.
That which has passed is not yet gone.
Like trees, we grow on the rotten bones of giants.
There is no king of the once and future,
Nay, nor queen. Only the rough tumult
of life that continues, and abates, and continues.

Here on the holly branch the spines sharpen.
The red berries have not ripened from black.
On the thorns I see blackberries still **** and red,
not yet sweet with concentrated sunshine.
I see the skulls of snag trees, the knothole eye sockets
where woodpeckers find their mealy dinners
and feast on the beetles and worms –
which shall in their turn one day feast on me.
So it goes, as it should be, as it will.
My vision shows oak giants long passed,
toppled and timbered an age before my time.
A thousand years hence they shall rise again.
Fear not; the axes of men wreak havoc,
but may only interrupt the flow, not halt it.

Again I stoop to pluck the fruit
And form two cups of my hands
From which juice flows like water.
The ocean licks the sweat from my skin
And I see a vision of the old woods,
the old ways, the elder magick
That will grow from seed tomorrow.
Hew my limbs in history, bury them in timber.
Let the barrow-mounds be a nursery
Where the thornbush harvest grows.
I found five weasels in a wood,
Five grey kits so fierce they stood,
in challenge on the timbered trail,
my urgings all to no avail.
They held their ground as if to say
This darkling path on which I stray
Is weasel-wood, a tracking ground
Where silent death waits all around
And, transgressing here I truly fear
So ends my trekking here this year.
As I sit and look out
I see the trees leaves dance in majestic rhythm
Moved by the wind the sun glistens and fills up the space between natures flow
Soft rustle to the ears comforts from days cares
Bird settles in timbered bough
Air sounds as sea shore
Waves swish in the breeze
Psithurism
such
setting
serenity
To the east
To the sundered east
Of the deserted Isle
Their lies a wrack
black timbered bones
Scold clinging clams
That harbour there
In the Wrack of the Isle
As she lies down

They say
In hushed wispers
it happened
Many years ago
Men died
Or so they say
But now, no one really knows
It's all been forgotten now
Through foggy years of
Sun and Snow
And dirth the man
Who can name her

The wrack rises
To the waters
To greet the
High airs above
The darlking deep beneath
Where once there was a love
Who can say, now
When looking at the wrack
In its black longingness
That once, it was a brightened
Vessel, fine and new
Filled with laughter
And simple joys

They dive there sometimes
When the tides allow
But divers have to be wary
It's dangerous near
Wrack waters, so easy
To be pulled down and
Within, you go
And once in her shell
The air can not sustain
You, for it is
Not for breathing
Creatures

Remember the shore
They tell
The newcomers
You must remember
Where it is
To the west you
Must go, and so on....
But carefully,
The wrack will
Call at you
Softly, and slow
Breathing liquid fumes
That fill the lungs
And crush the ribs

I swam round her once
It was a heady -
Experience, all shoreline
Was forgotten
I was lured by her
Cracked spars and
Speckled beams
So beautiful
Beneath a shining sea

But I learned there
That no man may
Swim the wrack
Forever, and not forget
Deep death there awaits
And lies down
With you
In a wet grave
So be forwarned
Before you swim
The wrack of the Isle
To the East
The sundered East.
The Wrack, in an imagined sea, near the lonely isle.
Gregory Dun Aer Jun 2017
In my mind your fingers were in the gaps of my fingers
we were holding onto timbered dreams of romance
then the floorboards disappeared from underneath
and I am in this weathered storm left thinking-
that somehow someway I wish you could...
I wish you could find a way to love me as I have you...
but the only words that come out speak silence-
'you are beautiful' because that's all I wanted to let you hear.
Theres an ember lighting a pile of papers
that seems to turn rustic a foundation of solid ground
and right now- I'm wondering if love is real,
because if it's real, why does it hurt so much?
Maybe I just wanted the soft illusion to stick a little longer,
maybe I'm not great, maybe I'm not good,
maybe I wasn't trying hard enough,
or maybe I just wasn't enough-
but I do know that ...
I miss you...
not in the way we built our relationship-
I don't miss you in the way that you went to work,
or I went to school...
I miss you in the way that I won't get another chance to miss you,
so I miss you-
but the sun shines on my face,
and I wish I could say its familiar shape stings my eyes,
but right now - I wish I was blind,
I wish I was blind, deaf, and could not talk.
Just so I can say - this is close to death- and I like it.
Nameless Mar 2012
I visited Stratford-Upon-Avon one sunny day
I Saw the beauty of the swans and an old Shakespearian play
Statues and churches with stories to be told
I listened intently to learn about history 400 years old
But my favourite by far was sailing on the River Avon
who could not be enchanted by the character of the black and
white timbered haven?
Ago
not one person knew who lit the fire
at the old pub in the town's main drag
it will remain an unsolved piece of inquire
who on that night used a burner's tag

back in the year of nineteen fifty three
the watering-hole went up in flames
from the locale an arsonist did so flee
after playing his match striking games

a shadow some of the locals have seen
where the timbered hotel once stood
hovering around like a ghostly screen
this figure is an omen not of the good

if it could speak what would it ever tell
in regards to the starting of the inferno
which was like a flammable torching hell
one but surmises about events long ago
M Harris Feb 2017
The biochemical snow emanates bopping dejected the extended, short existences of winter,
Twisting and wandering in knee deep whiteouts that scream and moan,
The chemical spirit, at first light mildly falling in inverse star-shaped fragments,
Beseeches virtue before the wheezing shovels, the scraping ploughs,
The ghosts departed back to air in a crystal tune,
A triad stinging from the bare breach in grade school melodic period.

From the willowy walkway down the timbered trajectory,
Snowflake burdened branches combinate into a rhyme with the masked sun,
The raw, stripped light in overdue the hemlocks,
Stillness shattered only by the cracking cold.

The rivulet is icy over, yet liquid runs,
Underneath, under, deep in its veiled preserve,
Life, the anonymous shadow,
Scuttle’s from stone to stone,
Mingling up a smidgen of gravel from its silent inactivity.
A W Bullen Jun 2016
The beryl high land smoulders….

Where skinny manes of cloven trailing, cuff
the rake of jumbled scree,
a porous crux of timbered carol
matins from the mossy shrine
to urchin on the bluff and draft
in nooks of birch and bilberry.

On that high dais, Corvid tribals
potter on the reeks of gale.
Fell boatman of the troubled storeys
quarter in some sleet cabal
to throw their onyx gauntlet down
a slating arc of fallow sky.
denuded of cover
   she stands all alone
     without a leaf
        upon her timbered bones
           above in sombre grey skies
              an uncaring sun hides
                 winter's whipping wind
                    lashes her hide
                      there she shivers
                        for want of warm light
                          there she quivers
                            through the gelid days and nights
                              the bitters iciness ever staying
                                with its freezing vetch
                                   so cruelly parlaying
                                     the end doth call
                                       she dies
                                         she dies
                                           she dies
                                             in winter's cold pall
Robert C Howard Aug 2020
The lure of gold brought Fifty-Niner’s in droves
     to the Kansas-Nebraska territory
laden with packs, picks, pans and shovels -
      hell-bound for adventure and facile wealth.

Placer miners squatted beside frigid streams,
    dipping their pans and filling their sacks
with nuggets bound for the assayer's verdict.

Mine towns sprang up where the veins were strong.
    In ******* Creek, Leadville, Independence and Central City,
the valleys rang with the strident cacaphony of
     drills and explosives - burrowing shafts deep
into the ore-rich valleys and mountain slopes.

Headlamps lit and shadowed mazes of timbered tunnels
     where men piled rock high into mine cars
headed for the mammoth crushers at Idaho Springs.

Whiskey freely flowed in saloons and hotels
     where raucous miners let off steam with
every mode and cast of ***** talk pleasures

In time, the veins were spent and profits dwindled.
     When the drama ended and the curtain fell,
the miners vanished - leaving only ghost towns behind
      and a new state named for its reddish river – Colorado.
This is the second poem in a cycle called Echoes from Colorado
We lived in a house a cleric built
In fifteen sixty-three,
Deep in a copse of Roman Elms
A grand and mighty tree,
The place was Tudor, half timbered,
And it creaked in every storm,
The wind was rattling through the eaves
Before we both were born.

We saw it up in the window of
The Realtor, going cheap,
It needed some TLC because
Its look would make you weep,
It badly needed a paint job and
Some timbers plugged with tar,
The years of rot had disfigured it,
‘Are you interested?’ ‘We are!’

Dead leaves had cluttered the downstairs rooms
And damp had swelled the floor,
The leadlight windows were dark with gloom
There were rats down in the store,
We worked and slaved on it, Jill and I,
Till it soon became a home,
Nestling in a hollow that
The locals called a combe.

I’d lie awake in the poster bed
That had been since Cromwell’s day,
The beams and curtains were overhead
And the wind would make them sway,
While Jill slept soundly, I still could hear
The wind sough through the trees,
Come rattling up to the shutters and
Slip gently past the eaves.

But then some nights, I’d hear some muttering
Down there by the elms,
Like ghosts of soldiers, loud and stuttering
Underneath their helms,
And then I’d hear the sound of marching
To a Roman beat,
There wasn’t even a pavement but
It sounded like a street.

A street that clattered with cobblestones
To the sound of chariot wheels,
I’d stare on out from the window-sill
To see what night reveals,
But nothing moved in the shady wood
To make those strangest sounds,
I searched and searched in the daylight, through
Those ancient wooded grounds.

Then one day digging a garden patch
I came across a stone,
That held a funny inscription on
The face, that smacked of Rome,
I think it mentioned a Lucius
From Legion Twenty-Nine,
I pried it out of the ground and then
I knew what I would find.

He lay there still in his breastplate
With his helmet and his sword,
His sandals still on his feet and tied
On tight, with a rotted cord,
The skull stared up at me in dismay
As if to say, ‘Who’s there?
You’ve broken into my endless sleep,
Invaded my despair.’

I swiftly covered him over so
That Jill would never see,
A sight to give her the nightmares that
I knew would come to me,
But then I settled his stone upright
That he might rest in bliss,
And that was the end of the mutterings,
From that day until this.

David Lewis Paget
Noxx Dec 2016
He said he was waiting for someone
you can hear him mumble words at times
in rhymes rolling of lips long locked on
love in another
brothers long gone and given up on ghosts
given in to inches between fingers
love lingered, not long but left longing
lacking leaves, trees timbered
cindered ash from set flames flickered
faulty fluorescence, your presence
begot broken, bruised, but beating hearts
kept in creaking carts carrying cadavers
and daggers dropped on open arms that faced the sky
began to cry and never ceased
at least love left legions of lesions
on heathen hearts held hoping for redemption
found a selection of pretty pills picked from prescription pockets, popped from plastic packing
eyes turned glassy and now they're cracking
counting seconds and stars all the same
for he was waiting for someone
and she finally came
The house had an evil aspect as
It hung out over the street,
Casting a permanent shadow there
Where the market stalls would meet,
The first floor was half-timbered, with
The ground floor made of stone,
The windows were made of pebble glass
And the window frames of bone.

No one had lived in the house for years
Til the Robinson’s moved in,
A couple, straight from the wedding church
Where they’d cleansed themselves from sin,
They’d listened to all of the rumours that
The house had its share of ghosts,
But the cheapness of the peppercorn rent
Had influenced them most.

The house was built where a charnel house
Had stood in the days of plague,
Where later a debtors’ prison stood
Though its history was vague,
They said there had been a gallows there
With a trapdoor through the floor,
And the arm of the ancient gallows now
Was the lintel of a door.

But the Robinson’s had sailed right in
With a mop and a whisking broom,
‘In no time, it’ll be **** and span,’
Said Sally, within the gloom,
While Brad had opened the shutters then
To let all the light stream in,
‘We’ll flush the ghosts from their waiting posts
With a broom and a pound of Vim!’

They dusted down the old furniture
Left sitting since George the Fourth,
And turned the old oak table round
So the end was facing north,
‘But still there’s a dampness in the air,
And a tension that feels grim,’
Sally said, as they lay in bed,
And she clung, so close to him.

‘Are you sure that they can’t get in,’ she said
‘Now we’ve flushed them out in the street?’
But Brad was trying to understand
Why the bed was cold at his feet.
‘Why are the sheets so damp,’ he said,
‘And they’re cold, as cold as sin,’
Sally was shivering, fit to burst
Though the sun came streaming in.

They sat at the old oak table with
Their bowls of soup, home-made,
And Sally reached out to hold his hand
But he started back, dismayed,
The soup was thick in the serving bowl
It was still three-quarters full,
When a swirl in the murky liquid then
Revealed a grinning skull.

Sally shrieked, but she couldn’t speak
And Brad had held his breath,
‘We’ve got to get out of this house today,
We’re surrounded here by death.’
The shutters slammed on the windows and
The doors flew shut on their own,
And barring the pebble windows were
The frames that were made of bone.

The people out in the market heard
The screams at an early hour,
Looked knowingly at each other, said,
‘They have them in their power!’
And Brad was hung from the lintel when
They finally broke inside,
While Sally was dead by a grinning skull
In the dress of a new-wed bride.

David Lewis Paget
the elongated shadows of eve
                        across timbered paddocks were cast
                                              a last remnant of sunlight
                                                                ­       pierced through unto the grass

sparkling star light ensued
                          at the seventh hour of night
                                               the bushland heavens adorned
                                                            in a display of mesmeric delight

dawn's breaking sun came to the fore
                               it shone on the homestead's verandah
                                                  with dazzling beams by the score
                                                           ­         enchanting twas its extravaganza

  tis a wonder of nature
                      observing the changing moods
                                 of day to night  
                                            doth bring to the eye
                                                         such breathtaking sights
Stefania S Oct 2017
the cup bought on a whim
one of those mornings
willing to spend more than five
for what should cost a buck
but the leaves drew me in
the circle broken by lame marketing
often the case in life
how easily we break our own circles

this morning alone i've reheated its contents three times
what used to be a daily purchase i now prepare at home
the cup its carry
i'm probably killing myself with the reheating
the construction recyclable but that means nothing
anymore
reheat inside of that and you'll get cancer
someone says
makes no sense though because the coffee is ******* hot
and the ******* cup holds it every day before it's reheated

i want to be that cup, i think
ready and willing to carry around the contents put upon it
no fuss or bustling
just a vessel
inanimate
thought little of, pushed to the corner of the closet
brought out for utility

how to be a cup?
how to trade the drive and flourish
the passion that keeps pounding away
the flashes of intensity that find their way into tiny timbered moments
silly though, because of course i can't be the cup
no more than i can be the actual coffee
William Jan 2014
Among the matted walls
the painted dolls
the cold crashes
timbered against us
fought to constrain us
thought they would rain us

but what fools
among these tools
we are what we are
no bonds
may bound us
no cage constrain

our lives
are open to take flight
to rule the night
we have it inside us

our release
begins not with constraint
our release
is a phantom

our release,
Our Release!
after he had a whiskey
at the Stony Creek saloon
the cowboy rode out
to face his high noon

with a Winchester rifle
stowed in his saddle pack
he rode along
the timbered mountain track

by a bluff clearing
he sighted a camp fire
which signaled to him
that it was Jake Maguire

he called out his name
saying your days in sun are over
I'm going gun you down
before the day is over

with his Winchester primed
and ready to blast
the cowboy shot Maguire
lightning fast

there was no high noon
contest on that summer day
as into the sun set
the cowboy rode away
by way of the solemn.
more so than
by way of the brilliant.

emotions
not fully focused,
would perform deeds unaware,
evil impure, pooling and swirling.
young stagnant river, aging unnoticed under Missourian mountains.
take a stroll now to mend all your wounds.

from hope or pain you will close your eyes.

                                      coax today's life to a slumber.
                       know today's knife is your slumber.

I can describe no more detail.

take watch?
                      "no, not yet."
stand?
and we shall not kneel?
or bring arms for our raining March?
                      "no, not yet."
bend.

phantoms now.

over the timbered forests, a glow becomes a guide.

yes move towards and follow.
sever their source of medicines.
nod yes, smile while peace is burning.
cook fire
   and eat, drink to a merry dance.

a shadow watching you now.
your shadow so curious,
                                 betraying you now.

"home..."

cried for,
in wet gulps near black gulch filling
with you.
closest scarlet.

by way of the solemn, more so than by way of the brilliant.
it is tested again.
hypothesize
or abandon your
growing truth.

time proves its weight.
over and over.

this is now end.
tragedy
t.hardy-1878
Emmanuel Chikody Aug 2016
My perturbed being paid huge negligence to my pen and paper meant to write a sonnet
For I'm drown in my own thoughts as I watch the sunset.
Thinking, how can I bring down this Jericho wall when I can't even blow my own trumpet

From afar,a chick called for its mother
Children taking turns to skip a gutter

I shifted my gaze upward pondering on the sky and it calligraphy
But there was more on my mind other than topography

Gone where the days when all we had were prophecies and signs
Now we have the proofs- earthquake, war, diseases , high rate in crime

Human uses human for nefarious and bohemian mischief
Acquiring a high decree in insalubrious acts and call it prestige

****** masochism,******,homosexuality,best iality,and with many severe strokes,
we've axed,hewn down and fall our hardest ethical timbered-oak

Immorality is now human right,transgender speciation is now technology.
Ostensibly, compartmentalize values and virtues are now seen as folk

Culminating this malady is 'Spurious Pentecostalism'-an acute locution for the aggrandize ecclesiastical new age religion loosely espy as ' born again ' movements

Which beget an avalanche of licentious sermons of grace extremists,
stealthily engaging in the defamatory of the Scripture.
The only exception is the law of tithing and offering.

As clerical entities,sharply dressed,suave,bogus televangelist
dispenses false miracles and prophesies of untold wealth to there flock
in return for their votive offerings

Take heed that no man deceive you (Matthew 24:4)

I Emmanuel sound it loud and clear
CHRIST JESUS IS COMING VERY SOON !
I wanted to write out a poem,but my feeling was been shaken by something very disturbing and the result is this poem
The house dated back to the Tudors,
Half timbered, in need of repair,
They offered it me for a peppercorn rent
If I’d do some work on it there.
Right next to it stood the Catholic Church,
All pillars and deep seated vaults,
I thought I could make it a comfortable lair
Despite its old timbers and faults.

But Kathy was not so enamoured,
She said that she’d rather a flat,
‘There’s dry rot and beetles,’ she stammered,
‘So what will you do about that?’
‘I’ll think about that in the morning,
For now you’ll just have to be brave,
You’ll love that old bed, and its awning,
And think of the money we’ll save.’

We got settled in and explored it,
The wainscoting seemed to be fine,
With three rooms upstairs, and an attic,
I seized on that, told her, ‘It’s mine!’
She wouldn’t come down to the cellar,
‘It’s too dark and creepy for me.’
I thought it would do for a storeroom,
It had its own hearth, and chimney.

One day I had leant on the mantle
When something had moved in the wall,
A bookshelf slid back near a candle,
Revealing an ancient priest hole,
But way beyond that was a tunnel
The led all the way to a crypt,
So this was their ancient escape route
For anything termed Catholic.

I thought I would wait to explore it
Till Kathy would like to come too,
But she had just shivered, ignored it,
And said, ‘you just do what you do.’
I couldn’t contain my excitement
As into that tunnel I went,
Imagining priests that had used it,
To burn at the stake, or repent.

Then halfway along in an alcove
I flashed the light, looking in there,
And there was a man in some red robes,
He sat, sprawling back in a chair,
And there on his skull was a mitre
That headdress for bishops of old,
And down by his side was a crozier,
All glittering, fashioned in gold.

But lying between his skeletal feet
Was a sight that I couldn’t absorb,
I felt at a loss, on top was a cross
On a gold and magnificent orb,
Caught short in his flight from the protestant’s might
He was stealing these treasures away,
In hopes that the realm of England returned
To the one true religion one day.

I picked up the crozier, picked up the orb
And I took them from where he had fled,
I didn’t tell Kathy, but thought it was best,
So I hid them both under our bed.
That night we heard chanting, a hymn in the dark
That had Kathy awake and in tears,
While I could see phantoms surrounding our bed
Giving form to a host of my fears.

There was an abomination of monks
That were filling the room from the stairs,
And chief among them was a bishop who stood
At the base of the bed, and just glared.
I leapt out of bed and recovered the orb,
And I handed the crozier to him,
He gave a faint smile, and then in a while
He was gone like a ghost cherubim.

I never went back to that tunnel again,
To tell you the truth, I was scared,
I knew that a fortune was hidden within
But to go back again, never dared.
I’m hoping that bishop has saved me a place
In a heaven for those who are saved,
So I can tell no-one where he lies in grace,
That knowledge I’ll take to my grave.

David Lewis Paget
Bryden Jan 2018
In Grandma’s garden,
the sun has swum to the middle of the sky,
and sits amongst smudges of white.
Relaxing, its breathes heat onto the grass,
which bathes until it is crisp.
A warm breeze caresses the treetops,
their leaves gently swaying to the rhythm of July.
As the evening draws in,
the sun floats down like a deflated balloon,
and the moon rises proudly to welcome the night,
where crickets begin to chirp and chatter,
under its pearly white light.
The pebbles on the deck start to cool
after cooking in the rays of the fourteen-hour day.
The rest of the garden is patient and still
as it waits for the sun to greet it again.

In Grandma’s garden,
the sun is running late to rise,
cautiously poking its head into cloud-stained skies.
The trees, desperate for their sap not to slow,
are set alight by rebellious leaves before they undress.
A shower of crisp brown parachutes fall,
a carpet of copper awaiting them all.
Night sends up her pale crescent moon,
breathing in the smell of decay.
It spills a chilly mist over the garden,
a spell to send nature fast asleep,
getting harder each day from which to wake.

In Grandma’s garden,
the sun has overslept.
The robin’s eight o’clock call drags it from its slumber
as it trudges through the thick cloud plastered above.
Skeletons of trees stand lonely,
no leaves to cover their timbered bones.
They reach up towards the faded sun,
hiding within sombre grey skies.
Droplets of dew dangle from the grass like crystal baubles,
and before you know it, the sun is yawning once more.
The night arrives,
its icy breath crisping the grass.
The wind whistles a sheet of frost onto the garden,
as nature is left to shiver and shake.

The sun rises curiously today,
welcomed by Grandma’s garden,
proudly clothed in a robe of green.
It no longer wakes in a lonely silence,
but is instead greeted by a chorus of new life.  
Bitter frost is replaced with a sweet dew,
and the soil is free to breath once more.
Drowsy flowers yawn as they come to attention,
their heads soaking up the sun’s new-born rays.
The old oak whistles to the wind’s new tune,
making the daffodils stand-up and swoon.
The sun kisses the clouds as it begins to pour,
tears of joy for Grandma’s garden,
alive and flourishing once more.
Travis Cox Jan 2016
Wars burnt me
Out on everyone's problems.
"You promised."

I'm not a man of my word
I'm not supposed to be your hero
I'm not anyone's savior.

But I promised.

She followed me
From gray skies to gray skies
Timbered trees to dark forest.

The gray skies made her talk
The dark forest made her feel safe
The terror wasn't quite so terrible.

Because I promised.
forests of pines
were besieged by flames
in the California hills
hot devil tongues lapped
at the timbered landscape
MRQUIPTY Jul 2016
taken by rough hands
makes me fearful
but wind whispers
me silent.
timbered in arms
tendered to lull
trembling heart

nearer a gentle
coolness drifts
on a wind
carrying bell charms
sweet flower bells
belladonna to lips

dappled in light
and death dreams
water in nose
and lungs
I fight the demons
and fight back
flight away from
black pearl

alone
half drowned
half reborn
I gather up my clothes
I gather up broken
pieces.
pieces that are
my
gathered shroud

— The End —