"trills" poems
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
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in complete melodies
the frequencies i hear
can not be contained by anything
love is drifting through the hills
and you are home to its trills
she dreams of light, the fire bright
and full of crystal skulls and eyeballs
dozens of monuments are built
just to mark the moments
when we could have said i'm sorry
merge with the mountains
find the source of fountains
shine the diamond compass
if that's what you are really here for
broken dams are our business
feed the swans their luminescent lunch-boxes
duck for cover, its a wonder that we are all together here
that's clearly redundant
the tendency to dream
is the most important human faculty
its a tragedy that the lack of nuclear power
showers the atomic world in rainbows
as forlorn teenagers in the ice-age of America
govern our equipment from their parent's basements
and carouse with comfort upon chairs, cushions and couches
a million times the victory
a million miles of rope to weave
a million are the paths to god
and a million more are the souls
who've learned to cope with tragedy
i come cherishing and bearing gifts
figures of speech are my playthings
i am furniture remodeled daily
and intuitively placed around your home
the finer things in life are free
so see me there upon your television set
i am electromagnetic static
within the black and white of advertisements
i am figures of forgotten speech
so record the unwatched programs
in your mind’s virtual memory
the hard drive of work and play
creates hundreds of new retirees each day
hundreds of haunted expatriates
knuckle-headed people
that couldn't tread lightly
even if they wanted to
so will you please untie me
and remove these binds and chains
it's time to free the lover from the psyche
for that is all she wrote
i am a silent p
i am a violet apogee
i am a cosmic minority
i am a message in your tea leaves
but if you stand too long in my shoes
you’ll likely drown in solitude
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 2:34 PM UTC
Someday I'd like to wander free
like butterfly, like bumblebee,
perhaps to plant a willow tree
beside the silent solemn sea,
before these things exist no more,
from mountain top to shifting shore,
when, soon, bald eagles cease to soar
and build their aeries nevermore,
and fish forsake polluted streams
(where sulfur swims and typhoid teems
since no one really cares it seems)
to die inside our toxic dreams
while ice caps melt and winter steams,
and all the air surrounding reeks
as children choke, for no one speaks
of fracking wells or oily leaks
(Big Brother's silenced all critiques!),
and rancid rains acidify
so woods no longer multiply
(for God so wills, we can't deny,
which is, of course, our alibi).
And as the deepest ocean fills
with plastic bags, and garbage spills
upon the plains, across the hills
and turns to poison dust that kills
wild dingo dogs and daffodils
which sink in swamps’ forsaken swills,
the mocking bird makes light and trills
(midst waning wails of whippoorwills)
"Behold the surreal scene that chills
and greet the dread that death distills!
You've had your day with all the frills
that brought the flood and final ills
that can't be cured with bitter pills
nor yet undone with further thrills
of profit gained that grinds and fills
dead desert sands with dollar bills."
EPILOGUE
Though swaddled still in infancy,
we feel we’ve reached our primacy
(aloof, though preaching piously,
disdaining deeds of decency)
and have no need of augury.
But in the pit of prophecy
the crucial questions seem to be:
“Is doom Earth’s fate, our destiny
to twist in tides of agony
destroying nature’s progeny
with no return a certainty
assured by death’s finality?”
and
”Should we plant a willow tree
to someday weep for you and me?”
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 2:45 PM UTC
My mother kept a singing bird, just for herself
In the kitchen
By the door
In a cage.
She fed it herself
and talked to it
at 68.
What woman speaks to a bird,
perhaps one who knows
and understands.
All the peaks and trills,
the notes of song
she heard.
She knew its moods
and tunes, she sang along.
Their ritual of conversing
while washing up
and dry with dishcloth
or cooking
or baking her special recipe
apple pie.
Every night, she covered the cage
with a blanket
to keep warm the singing bird and
so the kitchen light would
not disturb
and in the morning,
she took it off again.
Then with silence broken
by welcome twitter,
she would tell
her grey and black wonder
of her plans whilst at chores.
When at elevenses,
she sat near the door
with hot tea and cookie,
she'd offer crumbs
stare ahead, a dreamy smile.
One day the bird died
and into her dishcloth,
she cried.
Jun 30, 2018
Jun 30, 2018 at 2:08 AM UTC
In the parched path
I have seen the good lizard
(one drop of crocodile)
meditating.
With his green frock-coat
of an abbot of the devil,
his correct bearing
and his stiff collar,
he has the sad air
of an old professor.
Those faded eyes
of a broken artist,
how they watch the afternoon
in dismay!
Is this, my friend,
your twilight constitutional?
Please use your cane,
you are very old, Mr. Lizard,
and the children of the village
may startle you.
What are you seeking in the path,
my near-sighted philosopher,
if the wavering phantasm
of the parched afternoon
has broken the horizon?
Are you seeking the blue alms
of the moribund heaven?
A penny of a star?
Or perhaps
you've been reading a volume
of Lamartine, and you relish
the plasteresque trills
of the birds?
(You watch the setting sun,
and your eyes shine,
oh, dragon of the frogs,
with a human radiance.
Ideas, gondolas without oars,
cross the shadowy
waters of your
burnt-out eyes.)
Have you come looking
for that lovely lady lizard,
green as the wheatfields
of May,
as the long locks
of sleeping pools,
who scorned you, and then
left you in your field?
Oh, sweet idyll, broken
among the sweet sedges!
But, live! What the devil!
I like you.
The motto 'I oppose
the serpent' triumphs
in that grand double chin
of a Christian archbishop.
Now the sun has dissolved
in the cup of the mountains,
and the flocks
cloud the roadway.
It is the hour to depart:
leave the dry path
and your meditations.
You will have time
to look at the stars
when the worms are eating you
at their leisure.
Go home to your house
by the village, of the crickets!
Good night, my friend
Mr. Lizard!
Now the field is empty,
the mountains dim,
the roadway deserted.
Only, now and again,
a cuckoo sings in the darkness
of the poplar trees.
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may the way that gives way to this accord of may be in awe of truth and not the fruits of disarray
I shall be meditating upon the roads travelled and many discoveries gather that I have unravelled
I shall curl my high excitements and misguided ambitions to unfurl what the calls of the wise unfurl and admonish
In the mist amidst the tricking twists of fits and false gists, may I hold up fists that will seize to desist and delete the disease of fallacy in curtailed wit
In the shadows dark, some pale
may I not fade into the tales of lies and manipulative games
In the guise of dames so modern and fabulously inclined to fame,
may I guage and carry my animosity into the mystery of my identity where only the genuine and real can relate
In the encounters with material and all that deters from the mystic and ethereal,
I hope to remember the real surreal to surmise the reels of fantasy thrills in graphic frills and euphonic trills
However the gigantic systems of the world in money, greed, vanity or lust, may doctor sickness into the souls of the lost and weak:
may my heart remain meek and my vision bright and led by the lens of the soul....
With or without I pray not as a religious pilgrim but a sage seeking neverending Light... ever the more grateful, harnessing the grapes of creation, worshiping a servant's code in humility.
hustling about this rash hassle of life overshadowed by pyramids and castles
remaining true to the cause even when temptation is endlessly bustling about
remember remember the hustle when you were down and out without
Jun 6, 2015
Jun 6, 2015 at 1:48 AM UTC
Mother, mother, what ill-bred aunt
Or what disfigured and unsightly
Cousin did you so unwisely keep
Unasked to my christening, that she
Sent these ladies in her stead
With heads like darning-eggs to nod
And nod and nod at foot and head
And at the left side of my crib?
Mother, who made to order stories
Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,
Mother, whose witches always, always
Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder
Whether you saw them, whether you said
Words to rid me of those three ladies
Nodding by night around my bed,
Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head.
In the hurricane, when father's twelve
Study windows bellied in
Like bubbles about to break, you fed
My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine
And helped the two of us to choir:
'Thor is angry; boom boom boom!
Thor is angry: we don't care!'
But those ladies broke the panes.
When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced,
Blinking flashlights like fireflies
And singing the glowworm song, I could
Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress
But, heavy-footed, stood aside
In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed
Godmothers, and you cried and cried:
And the shadow stretched, the lights went out.
Mother, you sent me to piano lessons
And praised my arabesques and trills
Although each teacher found my touch
Oddly wooden in spite of scales
And the hours of practicing, my ear
Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.
I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
From muses unhired by you, dear mother.
I woke one day to see you, mother,
Floating above me in bluest air
On a green balloon bright with a million
Flowers and bluebirds that never were
Never, never, found anywhere.
But the little planet bobbed away
Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here!
And I faced my traveling companions.
Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
Faces blank as the day I was born.
Their shadows long in the setting sun
That never brightens or goes down.
And this is the kingdom you bore me to,
Mother, mother. But no frown of mine
Will betray the company I keep.
3.9k
Breaking the hush of the summer day
Chee-keeee trills the bird as it waits for prey
Catches one swallows skyward easy
Then for the next gets ready.
You love its intent solemn eyes
The brown neck and the blue shine
Its impassive posture that’s only a disguise
To pounce on the prey and merrily dine.
It perches on the lightest twig
A dreamer and a hunter in one rolled
Scanning the water for a large swig
Big enough for its beak to hold.
Sometimes the wait may be long
You imagine his eyes in sleep droop
Then in a flash proving you wrong
The blue streak would on the catch swoop.
Rain brings it an ecstatic thrill
It loves to be drenched in the showers
To reap the harvest of a daylong meal
Never tired of long hunting hours.
If it ever god forbid so happens
You don’t see anymore this creature
Know streams have dried up there’re no rains
And with them has vanished Kingfisher!
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 7:55 AM UTC
Blades and Band-Aids,
Concealers and Pain Relievers,
Sleeping Pills and Abandoned Trills,
Tired Eyes and a Young Sunrise,
Friends That Can Care While I Despair.
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 4:50 PM UTC
A cup of coffee soakes the aroma everlasting
that corrupts the air, shaking into harmony.
Moisture into ice, steaming up the hose;
Caressing her timid white flesh as
kisses breeze through the window
fill the room with silent words
in the ear soundless and angelic
and laughing crazy trills through his veins.
Over the shoulder, from the neck
his palm waves down the spine.
Two black gems, turn from night to light;
Big bald head peaks over the street as it
gathers drops from moisted heat
it rays on black silky hair
glittering from beneath the skin
and taste of pale freedom maddens him
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 7:32 PM UTC
Gun metal gray,
this pigeon grasps
at current strung black
across a brick-
bounded back alley
edgy eyes on
uneven piles—
disposable
artifacts of people
caught in-between—
it trills its plea,
a directionless
directive to throw
away smaller,
more edible, trash
Sep 19, 2009
Sep 19, 2009 at 8:46 AM UTC
i.
the Hibiscus is the paradisiacal
armistice of quagmire and wind:
leave it there anchored to Earth.
ii
when it rains, it bows to no one;
when it genuflects to no bird,
it trills on the red of the moseying hour—
nobody sees the Hibiscus.
only the children of the vandal.
iii.
last summer we had makeshift
bubble machines and in the high-rise
of the twilight's cradle, we ran
viciously against the humdrum town
blowing bushels of laughter at
the dreary populace — the brooms
to a sweeping rustle, unsettled dust
mounting the ether.
we hurtled across the
infantile roads like they owed us something finitely attributed
to our locomotives.
iv.
the Semana Santa had gone by
and the season, no matter how promisingly redolent with emollient brush
of wind and laboring silence, held
no reprise — the Hibiscus,
it is not alone in the quiet verdigris.
v.
somewhere amid the hubbub of city,
there is a pendulum of line biting
the shore of waiting repeatedly.
only steel scaffolds erected and no
flagrant scent aroused. peregrinating
in the haloed hour, the nascent furl of
belch from vociferous iron-clad beasts
in all of EDSA
and when i look at people around me
they look like gumamelas, finally,
yet i am
not coming home.
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 3:15 AM UTC
The vivid grass with visible delight
Springing triumphant from the pregnant earth,
The butterflies, and sparrows in brief flight
Chirping and dancing for the season's birth,
The dandelions and rare daffodils
That touch the deep-stirred heart with hands of gold,
The thrushes sending forth their joyous trills,--
Not these, not these did I at first behold!
But seated on the benches daubed with green,
The castaways of life, a few asleep,
Some withered women desolate and mean,
And over all, life's shadows dark and deep.
Moaning I turned away, for misery
I have the strength to bear but not to see.
3.1k
What on Earth
took you? Do we dare land?
A lark of descension. An aborted beginning.
Moon trills.
Captain is dead
at the controls.
Mother gives birth in the airlock.
Trouble in the passageways.
A struggle to name it.
A drink before eclipse.
All that's wrong with the world
sounds like harmonium in the (wishing) well.
First flight over Hölderlin's Archipelago,
creating new and stranger versions
in the sandclouds.
So this is
Tharsis Rise?
Life without a trace.
Non-terrestrial Martian field.
Halcyon flowering seas. A rock with no trees,
no urban hopes.
Yet, the whole universe inside
wants to be touched.
I love you in zero gravity,
pushing tender buttons.
*** as solution.
Moon trills.
A kiss of atmosphere.
This alien womb.
Those android embargoes.
Our children are born echoes of astronauts.
Lunar schedules
their first words.
There's a lightspeed sensibility
to this type of marriage and parenting:
no leaving the hub,
no exit procedure.
The Sol they sing
is a harm hymn,
moon trills,
subject to the ladder and the weight of breath
this outside Earth.
But I love you in the veil of a twilight moon.
We're monuments
burned into moments.
Moments without a beyond.
Jul 2, 2022
Jul 2, 2022 at 6:36 PM UTC
I saw a golden river,
You see it only in dreams
I am no special than you are,
But the river, oh it streams.
In curls where the locks lie,
The unstoppable river slowly strides,
Down the silver mount of hope
Into the chasm it merrily rides.
In the darkest point where ever you are,
It glows with great exuberance,
It shines, it's northern star,
With darkness it summons for a dance.
Its shiny pearls ray on roofs,
Of the deepest parts where you hide,
You've lived a lie, you see that proof?
the truth illuminated by northern lights.
The blissful river brims and swells,
Where you can't reach it, it pardons,
Though it's a dream it may somewhere,
Steal from the gardens,
It may be obscure, hidden behind,
Oh, it steals from my mind.
It was a partial sober bliss,
To seek a heaven on earth but in sleep,
My haze vision was sweetly kissed
And pulled out from the river so deep.
Oh, the river of golden hills,
I'll find you if I have to keep my breath still
Oh, the river of golden hills,
You will forever echo in me with your sweet trills.
Oh the river of golden hills.
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 12:30 AM UTC
Bathed in the shade of
a rubbery rhododendron,
I sway imperceptibly,
Lulled by nature's rhythms,
A silent, sleepy visitor
splayed on a ropey nest,
Serenaded by an aerial orchestra,
Chirps and trills
and throaty warbles
spiral downward,
Atomized in the languid breeze
like a Roman candle,
A staccato riff,
Jack-hammered into a dying birch,
Urges me back from the edge,
Where dream and dreamer part,
A gauzy memory of a melody lost,
Performed for the oblivious,
and a dozing, grateful
audience of one.
Aug 22, 2013
Aug 22, 2013 at 6:14 PM UTC
I awoke this morning from my little bed
In a world unknown to me
A magical world full of mystical creatures
Resounding with mystery
Magnificent birds with wings of gold
Hailed me with their song
The strangest happening ever to see
As I was able to sing along
No simple trills issued forth from their beaks
But words I heard with my heart
An angelic melody so sweet they did sing
From this world I wished never to part
Forever in this magical world I will stay
To my home I shall never return
As now I have become a magnificent bird
Because, their song I have learned
May 2, 2010
May 2, 2010 at 9:02 PM UTC
I. The Minor Poet
His little trills and chirpings were his best.
No music like the nightingale's was born
Within his throat; but he, too, laid his breast
Upon a thorn.
II. The Pretty Lady
She hated bleak and wintry things alone.
All that was warm and quick, she loved too well-
A light, a flame, a heart against her own;
It is forever bitter cold, in Hell.
III. The Very Rich Man
He'd have the best, and that was none too good;
No barrier could hold, before his terms.
He lies below, correct in cypress wood,
And entertains the most exclusive worms.
IV. The Fisherwoman
The man she had was kind and clean
And well enough for every day,
But, oh, dear friends, you should have seen
The one that got away!
V. The Crusader
Arrived in Heaven, when his sands were run,
He seized a quill, and sat him down to tell
The local press that something should be done
About that noisy nuisance, Gabriel.
Vl. The Actress
Her name, cut clear upon this marble cross,
Shines, as it shone when she was still on earth;
While tenderly the mild, agreeable moss
Obscures the figures of her date of birth.
2.2k
The old blanket is so hard to discard
dramas have unfolded in its folds
upheavals of winter's orogeny
trills of two birds in ecstatic thrill
to the rest in the ripened knowledge
*we have made a home
we have earned it.*
In the still of night
under the old blanket
the tales are relived
without a touch
a word..
The old blanket is so hard to discard.
Oct 2, 2018
Oct 2, 2018 at 5:00 AM UTC
’Tween hither and thither we wended our way
skipping, dancing through sand dunes, in seascape croquet.
While woven in waves watching dolphins at play
I first tasted her lips in the ocean’s wild spray.
Mystic moonbeams, suffusing clouds’ shimmering sails,
unleashed us and whisked us down sensuous trails,
soon evoking the trills of untamed nightingales
as our passions pervaded green valleys and dales.
Being spectres of splendour in wanton sashay
we mastered our meaning in love’s matinee –
the breezes, in passing, slowed down to survey
blazing bodies embraced in youth’s blooming bouquet.
With the wind as our wings, till the Never we flew,
two gypsies, on junkets through dusk’s residue
gently floating like pollen to everywhere new,
so eluding pearled teardrops that paint the past blue.
Yes, we gamboled and gambled, two waifs led astray,
with our shackles afire and anchors aweigh –
rising higher and higher, the sun lured our sleigh,
teasing time was our temptress, night’n day after day.
Having stars in our eyes and all time as our view,
we’ve drifted, like dreamers where sprites rendezvous
and feasted on laughter and sipped morning dew
while rambling forever as one made of two.
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 4:07 AM UTC
I could be the little swallow who sings for you
But your hands are a prison
Not a birdhouse
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 2:52 AM UTC
Thy bower is finished, fairest!
Fit bower for hunter's bride--
Where old woods overshadow
The green savanna's side.
I've wandered long, and wandered far,
And never have I met,
In all this lovely western land,
A spot so lovely yet.
But I shall think it fairer,
When thou art come to bless,
With thy sweet smile and silver voice,
Its silent loveliness.
For thee the wild grape glistens,
On sunny knoll and tree,
The slim papaya ripens
Its yellow fruit for thee.
For thee the duck, on glassy stream,
The prairie-fowl shall die,
My rifle for thy feast shall bring
The wild swan from the sky.
The forest's leaping panther,
Fierce, beautiful, and fleet,
Shall yield his spotted hide to be
A carpet for thy feet.
I know, for thou hast told me,
Thy maiden love of flowers;
Ah, those that deck thy gardens
Are pale compared with ours.
When our wide woods and mighty lawns
Bloom to the April skies,
The earth has no more gorgeous sight
To show to human eyes.
In meadows red with blossoms,
All summer long, the bee
Murmurs, and loads his yellow thighs,
For thee, my love, and me.
Or wouldst thou gaze at tokens
Of ages long ago--
Our old oaks stream with mosses,
And sprout with mistletoe;
And mighty vines, like serpents, climb
The giant sycamore;
And trunks, o'erthrown for centuries,
Cumber the forest floor;
And in the great savanna,
The solitary mound,
Built by the elder world, o'erlooks
The loneliness around.
Come, thou hast not forgotten
Thy pledge and promise quite,
With many blushes murmured,
Beneath the evening light.
Come, the young violets crowd my door,
Thy earliest look to win,
And at my silent window-sill
The jessamine peeps in.
All day the red-bird warbles,
Upon the mulberry near,
And the night-sparrow trills her song,
All night, with none to hear.
2k
Here you stand blowing raspberries
at my phonemic skills.
Please close your lips. Just listen.
Learn of bilabial trills.
You may call me an animal
for my alveolar clicks,
for in America its only real use
is for catcalling chicks.
And not many understand
a velar implosive stop,
that the words are the gurgle
of a doughnut shop cop.
And yes, my pharyngeal fricative
sounds like something's amiss.
But its not always contempt,
like some puppet show hiss.
So, if you just could excuse
my pulmonic ingressive,
I promise, If it feels like it hurts,
I will be singly expressive.
I guess all I can say
is that when you hear what I say,
remember, it more than just words
that I try to convey.
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 8:46 AM UTC