"turf" poems
Age and Grace
Her steps were always slow;
Even in youth she swayed,
Walked with sultry composure
And seductive flow.
Like a heathen goddess,
She tempers movement with grace.
It was not done out of vanity,
But pleasure in the flowing stream of steps
That mark her pace.
The relaxed fulcrum of her hip
Tilts with undulations in the turf;
Her feet tread lightly with a claim
On the summer fields,
On the bending trees
Where beauty still abounds..
She savors the trailing of her skirt
Through unseen paths in drooping grass.
Until the evening mist accrues
From out the forest paths
Caressing her as she yields,
Until she and it are almost one.
Like Whistler’s “breath on a pane of glass”,
She bargains with nature,
Waning to become an aesthetic phantom.
She stops at a window and watches
With a sad smile, the warm light on life,
The laughter, talk and dancing grace
Of her children, who don’t yet know
The bittersweet taste of withered garlands.
Yet she accepts and passes into the dusk.
Now she executes a careful,
Battement fondu as her hands dip
To reach the soaking pods
Of next year’s summer flowers.
Every move must be planned,
To manage every hour.
For they are as precious now,
As her own days,
Fading into glory and reborn,
Into spring and youth’s careless riot.
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 11:19 AM UTC
Galaxy gardener sailing a ship,
through endless horizons it makes a trip.
She/he looks into the inky canvas blend,
then scatters some seeds in the spacial rend.
What does await this brave lovely soul,
when we see the universe's gears roll.
Ionizing radiation penetrates through,
while watering can always holds true.
Space turf gingerly shovelled over seeds,
her/his forehead adorned with water beads.
Nitrogenous nutrients now nuzzled into,
the serene slumbering seedlings to be.
Galaxy gardener greets growing greens,
lively lushscious leaves forward leans.
Wormhole worn star systems she/he fixes up,
as does she/he proudly prune her/his wondrous crop.
Many a plant has grown under her/his care,
yet she/he never feasts on the fruits they bear.
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 1:49 AM UTC
While the globe crawls as
S L O W
as my bill is thin,
I've got places to go,
sunsets to chase
and mighty, invisible wings
to feed, so
bring on the sugar water!
Feathers flickering furiously;
sweet Jesus!
where are my feet?
I am BUZZING through today,
routes as long as my tongue
repeated in an
unbroken line
thousands of times,
*hey, **** OFF, you goon!
That's MY nectar!
Scram!*
Planning my daily rounds,
relying on the donations
of fans who eye my turf war
with childish glee
*and I hope
beyond hope to see
pitcher after sweet pitcher
waiting for me*
Because neglect is starvation,
an end to the thrum
of tiny hearts.
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 7:13 PM UTC
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring
What had begun to feel like reverence.
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My narrow cave is zero colour
a thousand winds that blow over
only blow kohl yet to see an eye.
The sunrise beams out in the morning's hush
as do the sun basks in the swift uplifting rush.
Ah, only to miss out again like yesterday,
there was a cave it tried to highlight.
Then lost me in the dark found a Moon
heavily tilted yet over a shady turf.
Every star eying upon it knows that
tomorrow again, this will host the sunrise!
Dec 9, 2018
Dec 9, 2018 at 11:40 PM UTC
Paper thin top soil
Cracks seep through
Red dirt.
Bloodless gashes
Simmering summer soil
Baked turf.
Rolled gold haze
Aches as the
Country stretches its skin-
Near breaks
******** teeth
Tight white itches
Red earth fit-
To burst in a
Dark cloud of dust,
Choking soft as to soak
The moisture fresh
From your lungs.
Blinding blue sky
Set for worship
On a tall horizon
Too far, too high
For common souls-
To float on a
Breath of sweet dry air,
Eternal journey to sunset
Small piece of a dream
To chase a grey cloud
From sky to west.
Where subterranean
Creeks used to slip by
Rise in a slope of land
Where water once carved
Its roam
Now the winds sweep
All traces away
Back toward the sea,
And fair beyond
The aching dry eyes
Of the sons of
This red earth,
A mist lies awake
And prays for rain.
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 5:19 AM UTC
Check it I be the mic originator greater than the next hater
So my nines will degrade ya send ya back to ya maker undertaker
Shake ya
With my earthquake flows formin' portals bigger than the black hole leave ya third eye swole
My thoughts travelin' faster than the speed of light say goodnight from the snake bite
A rhyming python wears cables and nylon runnin' bars harder than marathon true champion none could knock a don
Birthed by the sun raised by moon Sonic booms soundwaves from heart rates feelin' doom and soon
To be resting in the womb
The belly of the earth retaining my turf know my worth make words hurts
So suckas better tuck in ya skirts
I'm catching mirth
Along with death til my last breath cookin' up rhymes from the *** of my mind n continue to shine
Its asinine to flex ya mind if you cross the gun line don't be a victim of a graphic design
(Ya tapped out)
Scatzzz all over the kitty katz with my woody bat making them brains cracks
Cells it ain't hard to tell ****** fear me cuz I be the archangel Michael
fallin' deep into the depths of my hell o well
If you try to inhale my lyrical tales this ship is set to sail
On ya brainwaves these days fools rappin' for cheap pay lookin' all gay **** that I rather use the AK
Sittin' by the window seal signing the release will my soul'll still
Be reaching regardless the hardest artist
Usually ends up a carcass manifest the darkest
Rhymes but shine light at the same time crime at an all time
High once I blaze my thoughts cells fought & caught
By the smokin' arrows of a ghostly pharoah
Thats just my ancestors though lettin' me know it's time to show and go blow for blow toe to toe
Hands or the chrome pistol
The ghetto Aristotle makin' bodies mold from the enemies that caught a cold
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 3:40 PM UTC
Every day is new
the age-old sun
mints in sniffing
a blossoming fragrance
off nothing just off
the soil, a pure earth!
Deep inside of this
hallowed turf is a
a perfumed earth:
A rose in the heart!
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 10:24 PM UTC
Sweaty shuffle, gloved hands
light fuse, twitching in countdown
until heels spark trigger,
cannons drumming grass
driven by bellows,
magnesium snort
in wind-whipped ears
until gunshot
snap:
shell bursts,
shattered tendons
man falling into dust
while fragments *****
burning air, tearing turf
as cheers become screams,
awaiting another bullet.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 4:00 PM UTC
Mum had been gone a couple of months, six I think… (An ordinary day, feeling hollow but doing OK) …when I realised I could get rid of the sofa.
I thought it was ugly, she thought it was a bargain. A sofa’s not a keepsake and it was certainly no heirloom. I’d not inflict it on my kids. I got rid.
If I could’ve had her back then? I would’ve done. Even if it meant keeping the sofa.
Redecorated. Bought a new telly. Spent frivolous amounts of cash on scatter cushions. She disliked scatter cushions. I thought they were cosy.
My little boy drew on one of the cushions. On purpose. I was about to smack the back of his legs… (Mum would have, she smacked me when I was little) … I stopped.
I never wanted to. Had known all along, somehow forgotten.
If I could’ve had her back then? I would’ve done. But she would not smack my children.
Mum had been gone a year… (Planting bulbs, feeling conspicuous carrying a shovel ‘round the churchyard) …and I missed her.
It was as hot as the day she died. There was no breeze up on that hill, no cloud. Beautiful views stretched right out to the sea.
My little boy had grown, he helped carry water and dig holes. My baby was learning to walk, she wobbled on uneven turf between the headstones. I wanted Mum to see.
If I could’ve had her back then? I would’ve done. No question.
Mum had been gone three years… (Bulbs were doing OK. There was nothing left to plant that rabbits wouldn't nibble) …and I realised it was time to move on.
I kept the ghosts quiet while agents showed people round. The house sold. We moved away. A warm, terraced place in a small town by the sea. Dad died.
Mum has been gone eight years and I miss her.
Looking out from the Downs across cliff-top and sea, the churchyard seems nothing more than a soft-grey fleck on the green edge of town.
If I could bring her back now? Everything’s changed.
Ghosts exist. They sit in empty chairs and speak kettle-whistle. Wishing us well.
Apr 15, 2015
Apr 15, 2015 at 2:34 PM UTC
In a city full of fake thugs and now record beef they just settle it with 8 slugs
There rose a kid from out of Rogers parkway who kicks slow flows containing dopamine in the bars I slay like Dre Day I'm celebrating out the melon insane like dry water the sheep I'll slaughter like a psychopathic ********** with a daughter
Allow me to introduce Nero The Damphir psychotic and I kick knowledge like a field goal my pen is spinning the rumpelillest gold causing static with the lyrical automatic I splatter brains on the floor it's a nasty habit to endure.
I'm Chicago's poet I spit knowledge and split spines with the rhymes so solid no one will notice I roll this ***** up like the best cest and smoke it unless you take it off the wax and into the turf I'll make you taste the salt of the earth and after you're in the dirt I'll bear you like Paul you have no chance at all against me the pen is all I need to destroy then employ my victims my rhymes stay within them like That dude they net in juvenile detention center I'm centric on hip-hop that is I got love for cold crush sugarhill grandmaster flash and whodini Wu-Tang naughty by nature and Cypress Hill
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 12:57 AM UTC
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pin rest; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the ***** sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining **** among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a *****
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no ***** to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
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When I hear the words “marching band”,
I think of 4 am’s eating donuts on the bus,
Piled in big heaps to conserve warmth,
Not caring who we were laying on.
I think of lips on fire,
Sectionals that drag on and on in
The scorching sun, and staying
At attention for longer than you can bear.
I think of impossibly quick changes into uniforms,
Asking your friends to zip you up,
Band moms wiping off bibbers and shoes,
And when you’re all ready, realizing you didn’t put on your mic.
I think of falling on turf during
25 mph wind gusts, hearing the hail smash your instrument,
Not being able to feel your face,
But knowing you have to play on just the same.
I think of eating at weird times,
Breakfast at 4 am, lunch at 10 am, and supper at 10 pm,
But knowing that when you get you get a chance to eat,
The band dads have got you covered.
I think of laughing so hard on the bus
You’re crying, sobbing even, sprawled across
Your best friends, and you think you’ll never calm down
Enough to ever play your instrument again.
I think of the drum majors’ voices yelling
LEFT LEFT LEFT
Over and over again until the freshmen finally understand.
There’s always that one that never does.
I think of the moment of utter agony
Before they announce the last place in your class,
And you’re squeezing your eyes shut, praying
That at the very least, you won’t be last.
I think of that moment of utter relief
After you hear the last place in your class,
And it’s not you, and your prayers have been answered
That at the very least, you were not last.
I think of the last competition of the season,
When the seniors are bawling and it seems like
Your entire world is crashing down,
And nothing will ever be right again.
This poem could go on forever,
But finally: finally.
When I hear the words “marching band”,
I think of that triumphant moment right
As your show ends for the last time,
That last horns down,
And you know you’ve given it your all,
And no matter what your score is,
You feel in your heart that you have put everything
You have out there,
All the music, the drill, the blood, sweat and tears,
Out there on that football field.
And that moment, you can get no where else, but
Marching band.
Oct 26, 2018
Oct 26, 2018 at 5:42 PM UTC
While they noticed the stretch of kohl in her eyes,
I could see a pacific of emotions trapped.
While they admired her blushing cheeks,
I could read the paleness she painted red.
While they were going gaga over her smirk,
I could fathom the depth of pain that debarred a hearty gale.
While they were lured by the cascade of her hair when she unscrewed the bun,
I could feel the onus of the tantrums she wanted to turf out.
While they were hypnotized by her mesmeric curves,
I was stunned by the withstanding efficacy of such a fragile body.
While they adored her attire and scarves,
I could trace the bruises she carried with poise.
While they were hung up by the glory of her face,
I could do no help but ride out at the scars she concealed with sprightliness which was the most beautiful thing my eyes could ever have a view of and it left me dazed...
And my mouth wide opened.
-Aparajita Tripathi
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 3:36 PM UTC
Whan the turuf is thy tour
anonymous Middle English poem, circa the 13th century AD
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
When the turf is your tower
and the pit is your bower,
your pale white skin and throat
only sullen worms shall note.
What help unto you, then
was all your worldly hope?
***
Original Middle English text:
Whan the turuf is thy tour,
And thy pit is thy bour,
Thy fel and thy whitë throtë
Shullen wormës to notë.
What helpëth thee thennë
Al the worildë wennë?
“Whan the turuf is thy tour” may be one of the oldest carpe diem (“seize the day”) poems in the English language, and an ancestor of Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” with its virginity-destroying worms. Keywords/Tags: Middle English, translation, medieval, anonymous, rhyme, rhyming, medieval, lament, complaint, lamentation, turf, tower, pit, bower, skin, throat, worms, note, help, worldly, hope
Feb 28, 2020
Feb 28, 2020 at 2:56 AM UTC
good morning little daughter
good morning mother earth.
Good morning city water.
I will swig your hissing turf.
Good morning shade of grey
start the page
a better way.
Good morning
morning.
And a good morning from my ballerina.
A sweet morning for a grown
and young latina.
Sep 5, 2015
Sep 5, 2015 at 9:45 AM UTC
Through the vales to my love!
To the happy small nest of home
Green from basement to roof;
Where the honey-bees come
To the window-sill flowers,
And dive from above,
Safe from the spider that weaves
Her warp and her woof
In some outermost leaves.
Through the vales to my love!
In sweet April hours
All rainbows and showers,
While dove answers dove,--
In beautiful May,
When the orchards are tender
And frothing with flowers,--
In opulent June,
When the wheat stands up slender
By sweet-smelling hay,
And half the sun's splendour
Descends to the moon.
Through the vales to my love!
Where the turf is so soft to the feet,
And the thyme makes it sweet,
And the stately foxglove
Hangs silent its exquisite bells;
And where water wells
The greenness grows greener,
And bulrushes stand
Round a lily to screen her.
Nevertheless, if this land,
Like a garden to smell and to sight,
Were turned to a desert of sand,
Stripped bare of delight,
All its best gone to worst,
For my feet no repose,
No water to comfort my thirst,
And heaven like a furnace above,--
The desert would be
As gushing of waters to me,
The wilderness be as a rose,
If it led me to thee,
O my love!
4.8k
Look not in my eyes, for fear
They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
And love it and be lost like me.
One the long nights through must lie
Spent in star-defeated sighs,
But why should you as well as I
Perish? gaze not in my eyes.
A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
And never looked away again.
There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
With downward eye and gazes sad,
Stands amid the glancing showers
A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.
4.5k
I see around me tombstones grey
Stretching their shadows far away.
Beneath the turf my footsteps tread
Lie low and lone the silent dead -
Beneath the turf - beneath the mould -
Forever dark, forever cold -
And my eyes cannot hold the tears
That memory hoards from vanished years
For Time and Death and Mortal pain
Give wounds that will not heal again -
Let me remember half the woe
I've seen and heard and felt below,
And Heaven itself - so pure and blest,
Could never give my spirit rest -
Sweet land of light! thy children fair
Know nought akin to our despair -
Nor have they felt, nor can they tell
What tenants haunt each mortal cell,
What gloomy guests we hold within -
Torments and madness, tears and sin!
Well - may they live in ectasy
Their long eternity of joy;
At least we would not bring them down
With us to weep, with us to groan,
No - Earth would wish no other sphere
To taste her cup of sufferings drear;
She turns from Heaven with a careless eye
And only mourns that we must die!
Ah mother, what shall comfort thee
In all this boundless misery?
To cheer our eager eyes a while
We see thee smile; how fondly smile!
But who reads not through that tender glow
Thy deep, unutterable woe:
Indeed no dazzling land above
Can cheat thee of thy children's love.
We all, in life's departing shine,
Our last dear longings blend with thine;
And struggle still and strive to trace
With clouded gaze, thy darling face.
We would not leave our native home
For any world beyond the Tomb.
No - rather on thy kindly breast
Let us be laid in lasting rest;
Or waken but to share with thee
A mutual immortality -
4.4k
Beneath the surface of the earth,
Beneath the green and sodden turf,
Wendy wombat, supreme digger
Raced to make her tunnels bigger,
Pulling dirt with mighty claws
And toiling hard without a pause
Ensconced within her little pouch,
So small they had no need to crouch,
Her children slept, all warm and dry,
As mud and dirt went flying by,
Quite unaware how nature planned
To lend them all a helping hand
For wombat pouches don't get full
Of dirt and mud as mommies pull,
For mother nature in her wisdom
Looked upon her magic kingdom,
Saw the wombats under ground
And wisely turned their pouches round!
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 9:14 PM UTC
for Ruth Fainlight
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.
Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?
Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.
All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.
Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.
I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.
Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.
The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.
I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.
I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it ***** out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?
I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? ----
Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That **** that **** that ****
4.2k
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going—North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning—sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming—air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.
4k
I remember running to first, faster then a scream
Now that kind of speed is just a foolish dream.
Age is such a vicious foe, slower by the day
My anger yells at speed of light with nothing real to say.
I still dream of hitting first against the burning sun
Each Saturday was just a game, a war that must be won.
The ball was hit just like my soul soaring in the air
Its always true life is foul or sometimes it is fair.
I loved to hear my father’s yell when the play was on my turf
The yells from distant fans of mine screaming for the smurf.
Even munchkins have to age according to the word of Oz
But baseball dreams have no rules and it's sons they have no laws.
Sep 26, 2012
Sep 26, 2012 at 12:17 AM UTC
As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep
the black river of himself.
The grain of his wrists
is like bog oak,
the ball of his heel
like a basalt egg.
His instep has shrunk
cold as a swan’s foot
or a wet swamp root.
His hips are the ridge
and purse of a mussel,
his spine an eel arrested
under a glisten of mud.
The head lifts,
the chin is a visor
raised above the vent
of his slashed throat
that has tanned and toughened.
The cured wound
opens inwards to a dark
elderberry place.
Who will say ‘corpse’
to his vivid cast?
Who will say ‘body’
to his opaque repose?
And his rusted hair,
a mat unlikely
as a foetus’s.
I first saw his twisted face
in a photograph,
a head and shoulder
out of the peat,
bruised like a forceps baby,
but now he lies
perfected in my memory,
down to the red horn
of his nails,
hung in the scales
with beauty and atrocity:
with the Dying Gaul
too strictly compassed
on his shield,
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.
3.5k
When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.
In the palace of Mrs. Phlaccus, at Professor Channing-Cheetah’s
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.
His laughter was submarine and profound
Like the old man of the sea’s
Hidden under coral islands
Where worried bodies of drowned men drift down in the green silence,
Dropping from fingers of surf.
I looked for the head of Mr. Apollinax rolling under a chair
Or grinning over a screen
With seaweed in its hair.
I heard the beat of centaur’s hoofs over the hard turf
As his dry and passionate talk devoured the afternoon.
“He is a charming man”—”But after all what did he mean?”—
“His pointed ears…. He must be unbalanced,”—
“There was something he said that I might have challenged.”
Of dowager Mrs. Phlaccus, and Professor and Mrs. Cheetah
I remember a slice of lemon, and a bitten macaroon.
3.5k