"transplanted" poems
579
I had been hungry, all the Years—
My Noon had Come—to dine—
I trembling drew the Table near—
And touched the Curious Wine—
’Twas this on Tables I had seen—
When turning, hungry, Home
I looked in Windows, for the Wealth
I could not hope—for Mine—
I did not know the ample Bread—
’Twas so unlike the Crumb
The Birds and I, had often shared
In Nature’s—Dining Room—
The Plenty hurt me—’twas so new—
Myself felt ill—and odd—
As Berry—of a Mountain Bush—
Transplanted—to a Road—
Nor was I hungry—so I found
That Hunger—was a way
Of Persons outside Windows—
The Entering—takes away—
36.9k
Our last connection with the mythic.
My mother remembers the day as a girl
she jumped across a little spruce
that now overtops the sandstone house
where still she lives; her face delights
at the thought of her years translated
into wood so tall, into so mighty
a peer of the birds and the wind.
Too, the old farmer still stout of step
treads through the orchard he has outlasted
but for some hollow-trunked much-lopped
apples and Bartlett pears. The dogwood
planted to mark my birth flowers each April,
a soundless explosion. We tell its story
time after time: the drizzling day,
the fragile sapling that had to be staked.
At the back of our acre here, my wife and I,
freshly moved in, freshly together,
transplanted two hemlocks that guarded our door
gloomily, green gnomes a meter high.
One died, gray as sagebrush next spring.
The other lives on and some day will dominate
this view no longer mine, its great
lazy feathery hemlock limbs down-drooping,
its tent-shaped caverns resinous and deep.
Then may I return, an old man, a trespasser,
and remember and marvel to see
our small deed, that hurried day,
so amplified, like a story through layers of air
told over and over, spreading.
9.5k
Submissiveness:
give into man. silence yourself. his word is final. rush to his beck and call when he is angered. we are wrong. man is dominant, and woman is soft. if man is the bone, we are the gushy cartilage cushioning his fall. body dominated and composed of bone, but we are the organs that keep the body functioning. forever being transplanted, while our men are broken. submit.
Purity:
save yourself for man. wait for him with all your white so you are not tainted. innocence upheld. it is all for him, only him. wait for him to take it all, whenever he desires. be pure.
Domesticity:
the home calls our name. it is our calling. our knees bound to scrubbing, hands tied to kneading because our family needs us. we are to be the slaves of our homes just as we were to the white man. permanency of pressing collars that are not our own. domestic labor.
Piety:
we come from the rib of adam. without the presence of man we, ourselves would not exist. for this reason, we worship. we worship to reiterate our purity, to maintain our sanity when others challenge our virtues of womanhood. the lord is our shepherd. we uphold our lord. besides our husbands, he is all that we shall want.
womanhood.
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 12:08 PM UTC
Collection of characteristics
that the outside world
deems desirable:
empathy,
gentleness,
sensitivity,
the ability to love
deeply, madly.
Yet,
from where I stand,
the view is bleak,
for having a heart that
is big
means that it is
a hundred times more likely
to be punctured.
I wonder
how many times
my soul can
take these blows
before it withers
into
nothingness.
My body aches
of a perceived emptiness
that is
grossly
full of
an echoing,
resounding compilation
of disappointment,
anger,
and despair;
and though I am sad
in the free flowing of
my own bitter words,
I breathe in a jagged breath,
heave a large sigh,
and succumb to my
self-induced
anesthesia
as my big heart
is transplanted
with some smaller,
colder *****
that is not
riddled
with
pain
and
dismay.
I want to be
small,
simple,
average,
for there is nothing
to be desired
in anguish,
and I now
find myself
writhing in
envy of
those who possess
the gift
of
apathy.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 1:45 AM UTC
In Italy in 2017
A medical miracle
Will be seen;
A transplanted head.
They'd better get it right.
They didn't say which one.
Above the shoulders?
Below the waist?
Another ********
To dinkthink.
A hard-headed
Limp-brained head-banger.
Or did I misunderstand.
Perhaps it's woman's to a man.
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 8:22 AM UTC
I've grown into a bonsai avatar tree —
trimmed and transplanted,
sitting potted aside a window.
Waiting until I'm ready.
OK.
I'm finally, I think I might be...
I'm not sure, but
I am 99% positive
that I want the...
universe to shine upon me.
For rain ruining my day
to just water me.
To shed the seeds
that sowed me.
And branch accordingly.
Apr 24, 2015
Apr 24, 2015 at 3:10 PM UTC
The Quantum Poetry Theorem
from a long time ago,
a thousand poems a priori.
**Dedicated to you, Albert Einstein and the cast of TBBT, special thanks to the OWS movement.,
But especially to the few, the brave, geeks who write poetry in word and in equations.**
Scruffy, yet ennobled,
my own 99% invade and
occupy all my senses,
in my eyesight encamped
sensing opportunity,
the 99 demand
that each shutter eye snap,
all nominal exhalations,
every quantum minutia perception,
be live streamed,
direct tv to you
Everything I witness,
transformed into an
acoustic guitar rocking vision,
a levitation of poetic expression,
set to a primitive three-chord
rock & roll overture,
and my iPad,
appointed Recording Secretary,
compiles exhalations as ecrivations
a preservation society of the verb,
strings of words emanating non-stop
within my head, from a guitar playing
twenty four seven, ironically,
expressed mathematically
Street strolling,
busy brasserie bar,
a Pinot Noir arrives,
a large pour of
stanzas and a
napkin upon to scribble
mind in ferment but
A Capella smooth cool,
my bossy brain requires
incident reports,
a "write me down, please,"
and
no matter how much I drink,
ain't anti-matter enough to
stop my eyes from seeing
every human interaction
as a poetic, probabilistic,
verbal equation,
quantum expressions of sensory upload
The brain revels and reels from overload,
no mas, no more,
poetry fatigue incurable,
caplets and ointments,
string theory,
can't cure or explain
the compulsion I feel,
and the 1% of me
protests my
overtaxed mental capacity,
and
hear the, see the, masses,
the shouts, the placards,
outside my home,
shut it down, no one cares,
no one wants your transplanted mechanics
in their eardrums
Huzzah, found in my gut,
a Grand Unifying Theory
to coordinate, gauge and harmonize
my internal asymmetries,
yes, a coupling factor required,
but still,
one equation that explains everything!
my fatigued, pointy, index finger
refuses to tap any more,
my Theory of Everything,
and my poetry, forgot, overlooked.
in my library buried,
black holed, forever silence-stored
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 3:48 PM UTC
Transplanted to these '...fruited plains...', grandpa,
One of Gaia's fruits, what was his twinkle among
The countless stars? Here, millions have come
To stay, imbuing us with their place of origin,
Their souls dancing, flying, in a universal way.
For over 60 years Americans to be came through
Ellis Island, headed to who knows where West,
My grandfather, Uru, which means hero, a Fin,
One of three who left a concentration camp that
Fifteen thousand entered, did too, to NYC, NY.
Following freedom's beacon, its first light he saw,
The Statue of Liberties still unscorched torch, thanx
To Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, and the French. Of
Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom and a
'...Tabula ansata, a tablet evoking the law, upon
Which is inscribed the date of the American
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.'
The broken chain of tyranny lies at her feet,
Upon a pedestal, wherein etched words are,
From Emma Lazurus' sonnet, 'The New Colossus',
Which may rise again, only if we embrace them:
'...Her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'
Only 151 feet tall, she will ever stand taller, or
Be turned to dust with us, all of humanity and
Large mammals, as well as the Earth, tragic
Members of extinctions annals, if we don't stop
The permanent altering of weather cycles through
Overuse of fossil fuels, the degradation of the
Earth's orbit around the Sun. We can walk in
Nature's abundant balance again, humane beings.
Still, she gives hues to the vast canvas of what
The Big Apple, and its beautiful mosaics' art, can be.
I shine only because he, a Merchant Marine, did.
Dec 23, 2018
Dec 23, 2018 at 2:06 AM UTC
There is a Reaper whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
“Shall I have nought that is fair?” saith he;
“Have nought but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,
I will give them all back again.”
He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord of Paradise
He bound them in his sheaves.
“My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,”
The Reaper said, and smiled;
“Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child.
“They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,
And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear.”
And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.
O, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
’Twas an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.
2.6k
*Living each day
Looking around
Trying to understand
What is in sight
Life was once clear
My surroundings made sense
Everything had a meaning
And a place
The weather was always pleasant
Close friends in abundance
But today just distance
No more welcomes with open arms
Look at others through faded windows
Gloomy weather, no real friends
Acquaintances at best
Strange rules govern all
Everyone seems to know
How life is supposed to be
Me?
Just transplanted
A foreigner
In a foreign land*
Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 7:08 PM UTC
A creeper once was planted,
On a cold North-facing wall,
The gardener wanted her to spread,
To cover the bricks and all.
In the weeks that followed,
She strove her best to grow,
But the sun was so unkindly
And the frost so cruel so.
Alas, one day a child at play
Broke off her slender stem.
'It's no use' she cried
'I'll never grow again.'
But she was so courageous,
A brave, hidden spirit she found
And started sending up new shoots,
Directly from the ground.
One day she got her just rewards,
For all her courage and strife,
The gardener came and transplanted her,
To start a brand-new life.
Now on a warm, South-facing wall,
Where the sun kissed her all day
And the gentle breeze caressed her,
She grew and grew away.
She grew so strong and beautiful
And when the tale is told.
Her crown of joy was autumn,
With her leaves tinged red and gold.
Keith Wilson . Windermere UK 2017.
May 12, 2017
May 12, 2017 at 5:50 AM UTC
when that hopefully ecofriendly R.I.P becomes my final home
whether bios urn
or spirit seed
or any trendy tree from corpse to copse,
from dust to leaves
or better than
a crematorial commode --for fresher air and fuel for brighter flames
transplanted into other selves
redressed in mushroom spore-suit
seeded with the genes of generations hence and past,
piercing veils to fruit above again,
a mycophile to the last--
i will have lived with growth in mind,
that firm amorphous
ground opining green
to kindly live and die in kind
foment another view,
encompass monumental evanesce
supernal tablets branching neo-dolmen ethernexusnets beyond the r00ts
barking technoshaman psychic rings about a fiberoptic rosey,
perhaps a sappier refrain for finer silica domains
to sing along and echo Dryads doting long ago,
in threaded tones the make-remaking fold
of earthenborn rekindled kin of stars
decided to invent to cater otherworldly themes
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 11:13 PM UTC
We sat cozily on the couch listening to Miles Davis
She, curled up with a glass of Chardonnay, me, a warmed brandy snifter
It seemed an eternity since we made time for each other like this
We enjoyed our home in silence, absent our attention grabbing offspring at Grandma's.
I savored the scent of her lavender infused body snuggled in my arms
Her beautiful brown eyes reflected flickered light
The candles we transplanted from our earlier bath, burned slowly
And "Kind of Blue" transported us as we held each other.
"May I have a sip of your brandy?" she asked coyly with a smile on her face
"Of course," I handed her my glass
"Not from your glass," her smile turned into a mischievous grin
The vanilla and oak from the brandy permeated the air above the gulp I took into my mouth.
My heart rate increased, my eyes closed, and our smiles met pressed together; Heaven is real...
Her lips parted, she pulled the brandy from me along with my tongue that now danced with hers
The fire of the brandy that left my mouth warm, now slid down her neck in one smooth swallow
We took great care in kissing each other, sensuously, passionately, time stood still, for us.
Luxuriating in this kiss, a tear fell from her eye, met only with the tears that fell from mine
As our mind's eye recalled the love we have endured over these adventurous years together
Brandywine never tasted this divine as from the lips of my beautiful lover
Lightheaded, more so from her than from the alcohol, I smiled and held her closer to me.
"I Love you Husband!"
"I Love you more Wife!"
-----ChawzzyScript
Apr 13, 2013
Apr 13, 2013 at 8:16 PM UTC
back in the day
rocks could talk
often
they where
casual, petty and small-minded
just like us
divinities platitudes
every word a drop of manna
its magic
wow magic
so out of conceit
we made them gods
deferred to their credibility
and like idiot children
paid attention to their great allegories
a provident sea of wisdom
from the skeletons of time
we carved their faces from stones
put them on pedestals
and gave them names
the great know it alls
urns of heaven
those oracles of old
and so ensued
the epic cycle of talking statues
and thats how decisions where made
back in the day
the statues are strangely mute now
sunken shadows into earths bowels
and the age of reason
has been transplanted
by the age of
*what the ****
a new
hobbled world soul
of darkened consciousness
to cope with tentacles of complexity
and a forest of trials
where depth of thought has been replaced
and decisions are made by
the exalted
ennie meenie minee moe
method
an abstruse form of ritual magic
so from now on
all arguments will be settled
by me
sticking my tongue out
Nov 12, 2017
Nov 12, 2017 at 3:16 PM UTC
Did you read about the father
Who met the girl
With his daughter's eyes.
The gift of sight.
Post-mortem.
Then I read about the mother
Who gave her son a kidney.
The gift of ***
Pre-mortem.
Finally, I met a girl
Forty years ago
Still using my heart.
The gift of love.
Eternal.
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 9:28 AM UTC
Earth is aligned with Galactic Core
Direct lines are open as never before.
***Creating the home
we've been longing for ?***
From Source this our essence
transplanted in hopes
we'd transcend expectation
revitalization
cross fertilization
***Re-image the past
to create a new future
with great hearts afire
the challenge is on.***
Earth is aligned with Galactic Core
Direct lines are open as never before.
Jan 4, 2013
Jan 4, 2013 at 10:34 PM UTC
I wage not any feud with Death
For changes wrought on form and face;
No lower life that earth's embrace
May breed with him, can fright my faith.
Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks;
And these are but the shatter'd stalks,
Or ruin'd chrysalis of one.
Nor blame I Death, because he bare
The use of virtue out of earth:
I know transplanted human worth
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere.
For this alone on Death I wreak
The wrath that garners in my heart;
He put our lives so far apart
We cannot hear each other speak.
1.6k
*Liberty perched on a pedestal
balancing progress and evil
Holding high the palm of peace
over those who hold it so dear
But peace comes dropping too slowly
with all due respect to you, William
An unsettled and urgent promise
cloistered within vows of possibility
Willing victim of romantic culture
betrayed by the keeper of souls
Romance is no idle distraction
Intimacy, a vocation
Long afflicted by...
the sounds of music
the scent of linden blossoms
the taste of sea salted skin
the feel of sultry midnight air
the sight of sun through closed eyes...
Dreams once silently withering
liberated to wander freely
Uprooted from the stagnation
of emotionally depleted soil
Transplanted to aimlessness
where all roads lead to roam
Preferring the role of explorer
to the vagrancy of a lost soul
Strolling through this beautiful city
as having traveled throughout life
Observing without participation
part of a whole yet not wholly a part
An accomplished failure on a quest
to achieve simplicity of purpose
To savor those moments of stray peace
that ephemerally cross this path
...all the whilst searching for that bee loud glade*
May 10, 2015
May 10, 2015 at 6:16 AM UTC
the hardest surgery is the one you perform on yourself.
Steady?
Ready?
No anesthesia but a chuckle of nervous humor
the first incision across your heart.
When you finish (many months later)
you put the scalpel down, wave weakly
to the clapping colleagues hugging each other in disbelief
from the observatory, sterile and eager
you give them a wan grin
and hope they've watched closely
so that now they know how...
how to do this.
At twenty-something, I was taught by Fear
who said nothing matters
and then at twenty-something-else I was taught by Faith
who said anything matters
And she wasn't the Sunday kind of Faith that you find
clasped between your palms, clasped like you're afraid
that if you let go the Faith will just tumble out and break.
No, she was the Faith that was bigger than God and so intimate
that sometimes I was the Faith, sometimes you were the Faith,
and sometimes the Faith was me.
So really, Faith doesn't have a name.
But Faith and Fear, they both breathe, they're each lung
and when I fill one, the other billows, after all
you need two to breathe.
And so then I, feeling bold, learned about Bravery.
I had heard about it in newspapers and history book indexes
and in our local volunteer firefighters.
Wondered if I could buy it.
Wondered how much it goes for.
But I couldn't find Brave until the moment I gave up on it
and said, ***** it, I'm so scared but I don't care anymore,
I'll just do it, Brave be ******
And surely enough, it was hiding beneath the tremors.
So really, Brave was the Siamese twin of I'll Just Do It.
which, by the way, wasn't in the glossary of this or any history book.
Everything changes, you know?
I'm changing, you're changing.
Oh, it storms me like the sea!
I secretly raise my glass to stasis, my faraway frenemy.
Don't tell the other Sagittarians, they'd exile me surely.
Change, letting go of my old faces
feels too close to dying,
feels too close to leaving you behind.
And I'm not ready to leave you behind.
Oh the West, keep your Mountains.
If only for a little longer.
I've excised my soul again and again
transplanted and sutured
but there's just no time.
Even with these visions from under the knife-
there's just no time to heal
before I'm laid on the table again.
*Faith hold me-
Fear teach me
so I can...*
Steady.
Please- stay with me.
Ready?
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 12:04 PM UTC
I am the member of a one-man extremist army
That fights for the right to be (mis)understood.
I keep my gun tidy and all covered in a
crazy-ass knitted scarf.
I only shoot it when I’m alone in my head.
I always miss.
I fly below the human emotion radar and
Pray that someone will DVR my life
And binge watch it from the comfort of his/her dusty old couch,
Up in the attic, when nothing else is on TV and
Jimmy Fallon’s all tucked in his zebra pajamas.
I will climb the highest fountain
And whisper waterly in your transplanted ear:
“I am Vincent.. I am your yellow.. I am your ubiquitous sunflower..”
Just change the channel and the weather will do the same thing.
Bye bye bye, birdie! Bye bye bye, climate change!
I’m nothing but an echo’s echo.
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 10:12 AM UTC
I'm not religious.
I'm not even spiritual.
I'm just a cold, soft Vulcan.
The system of the down
has isolated me here
to think, which is what a Vulcan
does all the time.
It's really pointless.
It is desert, hot and cold
served in deprivation,
meditation, and
solitude.
The system has been doing
this for eons.
It's called increasing
systemic risk when stressed.
I make a cognitive chunk
for you to cogitate
over coffee.
Picture this.
Wandering Boy Scouts (BS)
in their pickup trucks,
helpful, strong,
vicious when aimless,
efficiently cruel,
mechanized abattoir makers
mass pit diggers,
merit badge takers.
Smell the BS.
It all goes into baking
gooey brownie BS,
repugnantly pungent,
and redolent of sweet
burning flesh.
Stressed, the down system
spits BS out
randomly to nucleate,
and procreate if possible.
Breeding a new Brand,
with Cult leader Classes
and all the -isms.
Visionaries with their caries;
Pushers with agendas hidden;
Leaders steadfast in conviction,
taking a nation, against
all odds, in Battling Bulges,
****** lines hidden
within clean, pleated
leather skirts
that still reveal penciled
seams up straight
shaved bare legs.
This is how the system
shakes itself; auto
****** asphyxiation.
Vulcan's never shake
the bars of their cells
because there's no barring
except Great Walls
forbidding, with a wink,
killing each other.
To be thy Greek brother's keeper,
is to cut not that brother man,
but the other brother man
down with BS fervor and S&M;
madness, before bondaging
his wounds in mummified
State, taped shut
with a healing kiss.
To have dominion
over the animals
means a bludgeoned
pleasure, or
transplanted
desire.
Dominion to exploit
blunted, unconditional,
emotional resources,
until the system
gels again, vaginally
or astrolly whole.
Aug 9, 2013
Aug 9, 2013 at 11:11 PM UTC
I’ll light another cigarette
As the Roman candles burn,
Lace the atmosphere with lamented regret
And tear it away before it slips into the chain of deterioration.
I’ll cut out my tongue
While there’s something left to say
I’ll retain the mystery
Whilst the rest is lost to history.
With adoration as a breaking point
I’ll feel each part of me disjoint
Under the pressure.
I’m just another guilted plague-
Haunting the crypts of nature
When the morality bomb drops
I’ll collect the shards
Use poetry as a Perspex,
Desire as a casket
I’ll build wordless pyres
Under motionless fires
And choke the concordance
With a suffocating breath of ecstasy
Until my lungs are transplanted with ivy
Disrupts the chemistry
As hydrogen tears through me
And we burn under element number one.
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 7:18 PM UTC
Leaving home is no longer exiting the address attached to my paperwork.
The walls that contain my childhood are a time capsule full of spoiled memories.
The bedroom where I prayed away scary monsters is now a skeleton of myself with transplanted hobby attempts by my mother.
The rearranging of furniture, the shifting of pictures, the emptiness of space and claustrophobic piles of clutter in the closets push me outside.
Outside, where the trees grew with me and kept me shaded while my imagination transformed the branches into jungles or utopian planets ruled by female playmobile.
My mother laments at the clutter and space we hoard while my father would be happy as long as his tools are untouched.
Leaving home is like entering into a comma, and every time I wake up I've lost another memory.
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 5:17 AM UTC
Uprooted
Time and time again
Transplanted from my comfort zone
To a new place where I have no friends
Shipped off
Away from those I love
Forced to start over from scratch
In a new and hostile living environment
Thrown out
Kicked to the curb
Sent sprawling to the pavement
Isolated once again from all I'm used to
Is it any wonder I'm messed up?
I've got nowhere to call my own
I've been forcefully torn away from
Every place I've ever called home
Apr 2, 2016
Apr 2, 2016 at 10:57 AM UTC