"trammeled" poems
Longing is trammeled in my throat
Oh the honeyed years
Before I knew what to miss,
Untrusted, unspoken
I exhale its blue haze
Between the last note sung
And the first note heard.
You are the wonted dream—
The consoling ache
Wearing away at softened bones
With every wish
Unheard, unanswered
The stars are so beautiful and so cruel
Our untethered threads
Adrift in the firmament
Uncut
Yet untied.
Jul 25, 2022
Jul 25, 2022 at 2:57 PM UTC
*dreams in colors that don't exist,
and 'mares re dear sir, deadlines missed,
wrestle~arrest poet,
instant awake
in the wee time,
pouring liquidity,
fluids and words,
puddling, stinking,
coming,
from the
always dangerous,
always interesting temple inner inside,
sanctimonious no more sanctum*
this particular sleep,
shortened, irretrievable,
bookmarked "closed,"
chapters,
hours too soon,
this rest business,
arrested
filed in an ugly
grey metal file cabinet,
in an unfinished manila prison
with your other unimportant poems
*the dark room universe
populated by
hints, shadows, voices,
waiting, welcoming,
mirrors on the walls
unified in one voice
deep, obtuse,
demanding recognition
"hither hither come"*
forced march
to a visitation,
to the the parition,
of your reflection,
clearest ever seen,
in the black pitch,
uncovered by guise, feathers
the clothes of normative pretenses,
the man-made borderlines of
preservation falsehoods
*seen your own semblance,
parts rearranged,
uncanny,
the mirrors are screaming:
shameful lovely,
this, our artistry,
your apparition,
now accurate,
reflecting your under-
lying
condition,
at last,
an accurate portrayal,
of your inaccuracies*
do you find yourself attractive?
this new balance,
the unregulated pieces
of you
before your dissembling,
discerning,
dissecting eyes?
*feeling the valence,
an introduction,
a physical magnetism
any attraction
any resemblance
to the semblance
that writes
this s.o.s.?*
answer us thus,
do you up
and like yourself
unvarnished,
grunge, swag,
truth trammeled,
don't you want to kiss yourself
goodbye,
or better yet,
fare thee hell?
*go ahead,
ask yourself now,
that one question
that prevents conception,
from your inception,
what is it that
makes you exceptional?*
don't you realize,
everything about you
ends in a question mark?
*how dare you write poetry?
you are the false poet,
you live on the division
tween artifice and self-deception,
this, your only precept,
and now that you are
clarified,
answer this,
knowing you know
nothing
but artifice,*
how dare you write poetry?
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 5:07 AM UTC
a man who understood his fate, all too well ?
who hid a great deal of himself, out of necessity ?
but, while designing machines of war,
possessed it seems, a gentle and inquisitive nature.
critics say the discipline necessary to ward off
boredom, was lacking.
at his height of power, he was not without detractors-
as the many patrons in his thrall, put their money not on
his beautiful red chalk , but the poet's quill.
hat's off to this well trammeled scullcap
and victory
bittersweet !
All Rights Reserved
James R. Morse, NYC. 2012
Oct 14, 2012
Oct 14, 2012 at 10:08 PM UTC
.
We stalked and ran with endless time,
Knee deep in rains of muck, grew lost
In tails of the always new, overreached
By trammeled spots, dotting, red wings
From black birds, knobby toads, garter
Snakes that shocked, marigold swamp
And we bolted above ruddy moccasins,
As ever wet, holey, dying for new days,
Gleaming in the swelters of the horse-
Fly sun, in the giants' grasses, we were
Heroes by the falls of light, glow, dusky
Bold, joys travail and dewy eyes echoed
With sprite flashes by the flies that fired.
And all our conquests— writ in the wind.
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 11:35 AM UTC
1.
It's odd Time never came
To wonder under these beaches' loam,
To walk forty steps to a tide
Where sea-green foam flashes full its blade.
2.
Trammeled like a nun, the girl
Swept by me thoughtless. A root's gnarl
Could symbolize slim pain
Beneath the scleras: two jackals' den.
3.
*Hurt inwardly, like darkened stars,
So bursting silence is all one hears.*
4.
The monotony of this shoreline is a throwback.
What phantoms come: an electric shock.
Why ten years ago is all I know
Is not half as important as who or how.
5.
The autumnal tremor, the rainless moonlight...
Memories of little weight....
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 4:47 PM UTC
“And only the azure painted sky to shake the rain from its sound,” so the plain falls, opening its mouth through a bed of headstones dotted with the hollowed trunks of magnolias and cedar at afternoon and that cameo of calamansi velour interwoven with the softest glaucous velvet. Inside that whirlpool of sacrosanct textiles a blur, that shocking shrill of coolness catches the skin- this hole-covered schmata oozing cesious acronychal threads pull tight across the hooves, branches, and stream. Only the thin repelling flume of winter’s height eschews this ianthine material over the sinews and map-lined bones. A corpse shortening its gaze, eyes stone-free, empty of nictitation. Nothing stings more than autumn’s filemot sins scraping sideways down a tiled balcony, and the dove’s beg like circus rats, shaped by the finite breaths of decade’s old poetry edging its moods like a bold inflammatory conflagration of the de-evolution. While the fulvous trammeled dirt abounds.
Nov 29, 2017
Nov 29, 2017 at 4:40 PM UTC
We stalked and ran with endless time,
Knee deep in rains of muck, grew lost
In tails of the always new, overreached
By trammeled spots, dotting, red wings
From black birds, knobby toads, garter
Snakes that shocked, marigold swamp
And we bolted above ruddy moccasins,
As ever wet, holey, dying for new days,
Gleaming in the swelters of the horse-
Fly sun, in the giants' grasses, we were
Heroes by the falls of light, glow, dusky
Bold, joys travail and dewy eyes echoed
With sprite flashes by the flies that fired.
And all our conquests— writ in the wind.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 8:37 PM UTC
( Sonnet )
We stalked and ran with endless time,
Knee deep in rains of muck, grew lost
In tails of the always new, overreached
By trammeled spots, dotting, red wings
From black birds, knobby toads, garter
Snakes that shocked, marigold swamp
And we bolted above ruddy moccasins,
As ever wet, holey, dying for new days,
Gleaming in the swelters of the horse-
Fly sun, in the giants' grasses, we were
Heroes by the falls of light, glow, dusky
Bold, joys travail and dewy eyes echoed
With sprite flashes by the flies that fired.
And all our conquests— writ in the wind.
Oct 5, 2015
Oct 5, 2015 at 3:30 PM UTC
We stalked and ran with endless time,
Knee deep in rains of muck, grew lost
In tails of the always new, overreached
By trammeled spots, dotting, red wings
From black birds, knobby toads, garter
Snakes that shocked, marigold swamp
And we bolted above ruddy moccasins,
As ever wet, holey, dying for new days,
Gleaming in the swelters of the horse-
Fly sun, in the giants' grasses, we were
Heroes by the falls of light, glow, dusky
Bold, joys travail and dewy eyes echoed
With sprite flashes by the flies that fired.
And all our conquests— writ in the wind.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 1:52 PM UTC
(sonnet)
We stalked and ran with endless time,
Knee deep in rains of muck, grew lost
In tails of the always new, overreached
By trammeled spots, dotting, red wings
From black birds, knobby toads, garter
Snakes that shocked, marigold swamp
And we bolted above ruddy moccasins,
As ever wet, holey, dying for new days,
Gleaming in the swelters of the horse-
Fly sun, in the giants' grasses, we were
Heroes by the falls of light, glow, dusky
Bold, joys travail and dewy eyes echoed
With sprite flashes by the flies that fired.
And all our conquests— writ in the wind.
.
Aug 23, 2020
Aug 23, 2020 at 1:59 PM UTC
I dithered to my feet
My mind partly ridden by aberration
My eyes in pursuit of any remaining tinctures of light
My frustration disseminating its benumbing beams
Pulverizing every hope of my survival
But darkness prevailed my surroundings
Darkness-that was enthralling every limb of my body
Leaving me trammeled within this pandemonium
Perhaps my annihilation lied within this vacuity
This dark abyss from where return was merely improbable
I spent time contemplating,
Wondering, what brought me to this tenebrous threshold?
Ferreting for that egregious crime I had committed
Which made me susceptible to such castigation?
Was it my flagrancy or imperative innocence?
I thought incessantly,
But nothing could I come up with
Other than my fault of being ignorant
Ignorant on part of our flaws,
The flaws of the inhabitants of this opaque world
Then in the midst of my depression
Emerged a distant spark of blue light
A light- as distant as the sun,
A light- capable of illuminating the world
This spark flickered, blossomed and radiated
Gradually eating up the darkness
Slowly letting itself ablaze
Its heat so intense and almost emanating
I lunged towards it
But came back stumbling down
No- I thought this was not the end-
My unwavering fortitude compelled me to rise
I ran and ran, till it was in my hands
Till I rose triumphant in my pursuit of light.
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 2:44 PM UTC
Fallen leaves and Fall's color
brush against the longing in me,
tugging at dripping petals within,
seeing this season's change
with the absence of your presence,
without the branches of thoughts
I could plant and bear witness
come Spring.
Seasons bereft of you,
destitute in me,
and the unassuming way the barren limbs
pray to the skies above,
ask for when the grounds should again
be wet with life
and too when you should
step forth and give vitality
to this trammeled soil.
New blooms rise again,
the natural counterpart to the
decayed and rotted compost
of seasons since,
and so the sun shines longer,
brighter, and gives new hours
to your bright eyes
and seems to remind me of
the things we grow
together and the things
with which we begin this
love.
Nov 9, 2018
Nov 9, 2018 at 9:16 PM UTC
(an All Poetry feat to walk in
the poetic feet of Robert Frost)
Bucolic New England, circa
Early twentieth century New England
awash with dynamic harmonic leisureliness,
when much of North America favored rustic
visual whirled wide webbed watercolor
waiting afield at dusk, the thrum
of nature all abuzz didst feed thine
dizzily green jovial mien
unlike mean Gary Lewis
veritable innocence and naiveté
rollicked with mine lanky frame
relishing ambling into my own quietude
an infinite breadth, length and scope
of infrequently trammeled near ******
woodland paths grown over with brambles
nonetheless a faintly trussed harbinger
marked by weatherbeaten
for sale signposts
with here and there an abandoned plow
long since given over
to rust when the pasture
seasons elapsed since
farmer(s) left unharvested
fecund fields absent
the cloven hoof,
and deprived enrichment
manure, sans ungulates
ceased sufficing healthy
free ranging bovines,
where etudes punctuated
the terribly gross fresh air,
now no longer audibly quickening,
snapchatting, nor twittering
with the last word of a bluebird
deathly silence now 'cept
the wind in the willows
whispering woebegone laments
tree tops pining to cradle
idle youthful dreamers
boughs devoid of
psalm quivering romantic songstress
clattering debris merely
delivering echoed whooshing refrains
continually disintegrating among
in a disused graveyard
prescient ken aches with nostalgia
hallucinogenic nightmare slams
irrevocably shut the door in the dark
closed for good upon the onset,
wrought genocide against
the vanishing Red man,
a ghostly scarification meaningless ritual
wrested, removed, and highjacked
from indigenous peoples
without rhyme, nor reason
as fraternities no
longer pledge allegiance.
Aug 11, 2018
Aug 11, 2018 at 1:38 AM UTC