"tonsure" poems
There are too many hairs
I keep blowing off my keyboard
To pretend they aren’t there
And that they can be ignored.
I can't pretend I have gone blind,
I am admitting they are all there
And that they come from me;
They truly are my own hair.
It must be true, I hazard
Because I can see my scalp.
It’s a situation from aging
For which there is no help.
I have long expected it.
It will do no good to whine.
The disappearing tonsure
I needs must claim as mine.
And so I placate myself
With selfish comparisons
I may look older than others
But much better than some.
Not many decades ago
I once thought sixty was old.
I am thankful for my friends
Who decided not to scold.
They knew I was being
Just the least bit callow.
But they avoided labeling me
With words like vain and shallow.
So, perhaps the vain part
I have with me even now,
And I would abandon that
If I could figure out how.
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 11:41 PM UTC
The tall
young monk
by the bell rope,
in the cloister,
by the refectory door,
off to Rome
the following day.
I tolled the bell
for Angelus,
rope between hands,
words between lips.
The peasant monk,
fading tonsure,
swept the cloister,
black habit dusty,
humble,
soft prayer,
inaudible mumble.
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 5:39 PM UTC
If you're in His image,
Then I am too,
And I am not a lesser man
(Or maybe I am).
I doubt His image has a head
To tonsure or to cover as seen fit;
It is, in fact, invisible,
Seen only in faces as reflected.
If I'm in His image, I imagine
Material immodesty is nonexistent--
For if not applicable to you in sight of Him,
I doubt His view of me is very different.
If I'm not in His image, then neither are you,
And every blessing you make is a blessing to rue.
The word is holy, if not your definition of manly;
And if I can't fulfill your obligation you never will, surely.
If I'm in His image,
Then beg my forgiveness.
If I'm in His image,
Then mind your own business.
And if I'm not,
Then neither are you.
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 3:00 PM UTC
I made you love me
With treacle, tricks and tonsure.
I was so sure of myself
I could dissuade you from anyone else
And elves would come
In the night to bewitch you more deeply.
Sleepy, sleeping, not seeing
You would fall under my loving spell.
And well would I use you
Truly dragging you along unaware
Of my witchery, jiggery-pokery
Jokingly, or seductively
Instructively guiding you to please
Easing you into your role;
Solely in charge of the play
Saying sweet, flattering words
Heard in clutches and hugs
Drugs for the lonely, the needy.
And you became convinced
Since I am so good at my craft
I drafted you into my dream
Seemingly all your idea.
My Galatea of sweet, smooth skin;
Sin for me to commit gladly,
Madly, I did not care what you wanted
I flaunted my talent brashly
Trashily uncaring of the scorn
That might be born of my ego;
My need so ugly to see:
Me, playing god of love.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 8:25 AM UTC
declared love, declared shame
for brymbo man living in suburbia.
declared love for mindless blobs
of gold, medieval collections. here.
ah, we discussed the tonsure,
denoting all humility,moved
quickly to primark, all things
underworn. yet there was no
brawn, yesterday. half day
closing.
sbm.
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC
The tall monk
with the large keys;
his way of opening up
the door to the church
as if moving the stone
from the tomb of Christ,
the key having done its job
is placed back
in his black habit pocket.
I polish the choir stalls
with duster
and an old tin
of polish;
I recall her lips
******* me
to a heaven.
The squat monk
pulled weeds
from the side bed,
the sun on his
bent tonsure head.
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 6:02 PM UTC
Fallibly, this evening, the moon over movements
exposed to prying dimness.
Everything is resigned to silence. The balcony
peering through the vastness, the moon like a tonsure
of a septuagenarian paving a hole in the sky.
The Earth moves with feet: plantar, tiptoeing –
out of propulsion from underneath the ground,
turns to sway, a clenched league of roots
the dog outside fashioned to sleep, draped by
the curtains left to dry in the bleak behemoth.
a stone his own size, or the emptiness my own weight.
Here are misspent days under hermetic space.
I am a child left to my own salt. I lift sleep’s lids
and what dreams diminish in realness is nothing but a tide
that clings more to brine than my hands – leading me back to
where I have found myself verily this evening,
the old Moon repeating itself, unfinished still.
Feb 3, 2016
Feb 3, 2016 at 8:19 AM UTC
Dude is wide awake
His waking void understill
Five minuteplastic
The water congeals loudly
In front of his tonsure
Explode out of oceans of salt
To empty that illuminated ditch
When he parts
She supine in other days
Out of a matter filled gas
Over the shell of wellness
Or feather brush
The risen Antigone
Stuffed in her tonsure
Obviously never hearing the lie
Which carries darkness
Away from valleys of pride
The silence of the watchful Dullard
A cold stillness
******* in the forms
Exposing the Moon
She ****** medicine out of her mother's
Nose
Crawled clothed
Into her father's chair
Healing her mother's solidity
("Forget her")
Easy to remember the day
After the wake
She was found in the concrete
And the mother stuck in
Her grown-up gums
She tears his sickness
Not an apathetic ****
Away from him, black tendon
Reinforcing his unity
Without blunt gums
Eternity is drawing her hateful grunts
Of none these abrasive poems
We were a tiny Tonsure
Of the naked ***
Or a pristine sweetbird
Those sated turkeys are cowards
Empty of reverence
The sands were still
Of the red corpuscles
In that second spirit
Our divorce was undone
Sated
Against the white Moon out of his foot
Sated in the noise
This chills
The rejected plans of the impossible
That flitter on possibilities
Look behind ye
The rottings of all that remains
Never staring into
Junkyards of roses
Physical waterspray
Waking forest man
And she, last of the truly ignorant
A whisp burying opiates
Nightmares
And the obvious
Potent dwarves squinting up
From tiny depths
On those haters
Who cool
And freeze
And remain inert, careless, the missing stumps
They stop shrinking
"You lose what you don't want"
He tells her
His oft-described tonsure
Was in his toenails
"Confidence is a weak malady
Go away waking octogenarian
Go to sleep, Go to sleep..."
Jan 11, 2018
Jan 11, 2018 at 9:17 PM UTC
Vespers
What were you chanting
from down the dry well
of our German coffee maker?
A brusque Gute Nacht masking
the finesse required to defeat
the hinged plastic lid?
Begging bus fare
for the Silk Road
transparent,
even without mornings
bracing first cup.
A caution, then?
Don’t leave bags unattended?
Know the warning signs of stroke?
Sleep like a baby, use two-step
authentication?
Your cloistered solitude,
fringed bulb of abdomen
whispered tonsure,
solitary choirmaster dwarfed
by cathedral walls
soaring graduated
into heavenly gloom
where I hovered on high,
my nightly routine
to summon The Flood,
deigning to lower
a spoon of salvation
while you wove a gossamer
chorale,
working
the eight tiny shuttles
of your batons.
Mar 17, 2017
Mar 17, 2017 at 8:23 AM UTC
Morning Spider
What were you trying to say
from down the dry well
of our German coffee maker?
A brusque “guten Morgan”,
unworthy of the finesse required
to defeat the hinged plastic lid,
****** off mate” belying
the English taste for tea,
begging bus fare for the Silk Road
transparent, even without a bracing first cup.
A caution, then?
Don’t leave bags unattended,
know the warning signs of stroke,
sleep like a baby with two-step
authentication?
But your solitude, small bare bulb
of abdomen, put me in mind
of a monks tonsure, choirmaster
alone in the apse, dwarfed
by vaulting cathedral walls
soaring seamless into heavenly gloom,
where I hover on high, indifferent
god commanding the flood waters,
bestowing random flies of mercy,
deigning to lower a spoon of salvation
while you weave a gossamer chorale,
working the tiny shuttles of your batons.
Mar 8, 2017
Mar 8, 2017 at 5:58 PM UTC
O Lover mine,
Mind of mind,
From times of mine,
Our Autumn days,
Sixty shades,
Of senile grey,
Your balding ways,
A tonsure's fine,
From times of mine,
O lover mine.......
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 1:42 PM UTC