"turnings" poems
The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.
The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.
The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.
One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.
29.4k
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
The snowflake is castellated cold,
Of chill crenellations and turnings narrow.
Court of pie-powders and gray-skied brazier smoke,
Of inner mazework dimmed to ****** holes,
Or the hooded machicolations from tower spire
Of oily darkness and arrowslits of Greek fire.
—
The snowflake is Medieval reliquary,
The frozen skull of rain and blood clear of sin,
Wind-captive with its prayer of quiet
On quietest lips, close to wine and sacrament.
Or the chapel and its waxen paramours
Of incorrupt body and candlelight upon the moors.
—
The snowflake is the mighty frozen spark,
Fire-forged and ironwrought,
Under the eye of Hephaestus,
Blacksmith of sorrow’s wind.
May 11, 2019
May 11, 2019 at 7:47 PM UTC
it's five o clock
yes in the morning
birdsong has woken me
an hour and a half
before my alarm
was supposed to
even after another
terrible night's sleep
to-ing and fro-ing
with tossings
and turnings
staring into the blank
of ceiling and wall
not enough comfort
or perhaps too much
on this slumped mattress
to slip deep enough
beyond those initial
stages of slumber
down into REM
i'm surprised to find
i'm not as angry
nor as drained
as i thought i would be
at such premature awakening
i can lie still
untroubled for now
contentedly listening
to the chattering
of these feathered neighbours
an avian symphony
of movements manifold
May 23, 2023
May 23, 2023 at 8:05 AM UTC
From my new book, Poems of Ancient Rome and Greece, available in paperback on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as eBook on Kindle, Nook, and Apple Books: https://www.amazon.com/Poems-Ancient-Greece-Christopher-Saitta/dp/B0DS6933HB?ref_=ast_author_dp
My mother the sea,
She woke my sandy eyes,
Just to tell me she had to leave,
Draw past the markets where the fish are sun-dried,
Snarled by the coral-rough hands of divers deep.
My mother the sea,
She left her running tab
Of the grocer’s choicest greens,
Thumbed the velamentous rinds and spiny scarola,
Her xylem and phloem are the slow moving cruciferousness of a breeze.
My mother the sea,
Charwoman of tides,
Who dips and delves upon her knees,
Who scrubs her brothel-coves with chamber lye,
Cyprian mistress of the salt-stained sheets.
I have looked for you, mother,
A scugnizzo amid the striped awnings of the marketplace
~ like sails to the sky ~
Where the fishmongers hawk their pride
Of conch, cavallo, and black sea bream.
I have looked for you, mother,
Walked sun-forged along the boardwalk,
Amid the neon-mascara of signs,
Hand-in-hand with only the ladyfingers of salt and vinegar fries,
Toward the crisp syllabub of pebbles and sand.
A beach is window-warmth spread free, cosmopolitan,
The longeur of eyes crushed in the glass-dust of cities.
And in the sputtering of the frosted spume of tides,
Held broken seashells in my hands like broken needles,
Heard the pump-click of the ventilator through your mask of sand.
My mother the sea,
A naked convalescent,
Whose ever-turnings have taken
A turn for the worse.
Who will know her by her death, who but me?
Jan 21, 2025
Jan 21, 2025 at 8:29 AM UTC
Oh the things that my eyes have seen,
the many places walked I have been.
Upon peak and trough did I roam,
rarely knowing a place called home.
So many turnings along my way,
passing on through to seldom stay.
Staying as long as life allowed,
more times alone than in a crowd.
Beautiful faces that came and went,
both good and evil sometimes sent.
With words sometime of the softest kind,
echoing shrill calls yet within my mind.
Words once soft now turned to stone,
where faces vanish until left alone.
Upon road so full of twist and turn,
until a heart can no longer yearn.
Corners met that were never turned,
unseen paths that were never learned.
Future's short path left to travel on,
in time memory fades and it too is gone.
Things I was and all that I saw,
gone forever through the closing door.
How long then be there just a trace,
that my soul and I ever saw this place.
To dust and particles we all will decay,
those once met too will just fade away.
Until even memories of all are no more,
of a life full lived that no one even saw.
Oct 11, 2023
Oct 11, 2023 at 5:42 AM UTC
the asker
the taker
the lazy hole-maker
the me and my watching the ground
the tested
the failing
the canvasless sailing
the turnings and ever unfounds
the grati-
tude giving
the talented living, but
the passions are buried in mounds
so ready
the dying
and underground lying
I'm blue
pull me under earth's browns
Oct 3, 2010
Oct 3, 2010 at 11:45 AM UTC
not all **** videos are equal
one searches the index,
hopeful a screenshot
pinpricks the eye and the peculiar
peculiar need of the moment
like most things good and appreciated,
sifting through the chaff is a learned skill,
required but not intuitively sired,
not every new word in the dictionary
delights, insights, triggering a welcome!warning
the sifter’s handle fits the hand uncomfortably,
requiring egregious prodigious turnings,
till the flour is silky and manipulative, ready,
pleasure is work, luster need maintenance
you passover, skippering,
a search for the next and the next,
treasured island is constantly on the move,
it’s coordinates require GPS updating
rerouting rerouting rerouting
what does this reveal about you?
there are no simple single path pleasures,
the first bite delight is ultimately worn down,
recalled but not equally fully restored,
so we need, insistent for new thrill pathways
to get to the same old pleasured places
the body acts, the body’s acts, the body’s reacts
familiarity is a museum collection,
everything human requires updating,
especially essentially by
the imagination’s perpetual swiping
Apr 14, 2019
Apr 14, 2019 at 7:53 AM UTC
My heart shines as the moon does
At times quiet and peaceful
Reliable and for granted taken
Silent and beautiful and ignored
A waxing and waning cycle
Once, full bodied and glowing
Light to find love and other hapinesses
Too brief a joy it brings
For waning must always come
Twice, dark, black as deepest night
Unseen in the backdrop of sharp stars
Leaving a world wrapped in shadow
But not so constant are cardiac turnings
Not regular as lunar comings and goings
Glowing for a day and shadowed for a month
Black for a week and shinning for a year
Yet just as the moon at times changes
Glowing big bright and red in the sky
So to does the heart at times change
A most wondrous change it is
Thrice, bursting bright from my chest
Burning bright and fierce to beat the sun
Just as the coming fall of giant Betelgeuse
Nothing could dim the radiant glory
Once more, dim past dark
Blacker than black and blacker again
Drawing light from all like a singularity
What could hope to live with such darkness
I sit now on the waxing
Or is it waning?
Anticipation for the glow on my right
Dread for the darkness on my left
Which comes? Which comes?
Jan 23, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 4:31 AM UTC
It's all a crock..
a body shock
a kick in the nuts,
don't forget the 'if buts'
another load of tripe,
when you're ripe for the knackers yard
and falling ain't that hard when you're already down,
for you,
who are out on the town and having a good time
let me remind you that tomorrow is mine
so
have a ball,go and get pissed,there's nothing in that,
that I've never done and never missed
I could
write you a list of the wrong turnings you'll take,
but
you'll make them anyway,
you'll go your own way
and we'll meet at the end of it
buried up to our necks in a pile of horse ****
Yes,
it's official,life is a gas,pass go and collect your money,don't you know life is funny and if you don't laugh you will die?
I tried and died twice,can't remember the laughter as I flew through the walls of the great, hereinafter to be known as the great ********* throne room.
And so soon,he said,
'you're leaving and leaving me grieving'
not really
because I don't give a monkeys *** where I stand or sit or who rings the bells,
I'm already there where you'll be one day
and hell is the price we all pay
for getting old and going grey and it's getting a bit late in the day for me to care
or bother to share this
so **** off if you will
and let me sit
still
deep in the ****
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 9:39 PM UTC
I used to be a mover.
I ran, and danced, and climbed trees.
If I saw somethng I wanted, I reached for it, worked for it, or asked an adult to get it for me.
I would fidget and squirm at the dinner table and in Mass.
I did not question, I just did.
I used to say things.
I sang, rhymed and questioned with impunity.
I behaved as though everyone was hanging on my every word.
People were constantly telling me to be quiet. I made them listen.
My voice connected me to the world, it proved I was real.
I used to laugh more.
Giggled, chortled and chuckled with glee.
It was my first reaction to anything new and novel.
It bubbled out of me, tickling my throat as it filled the room.
I measured the worth of a day by how much I had laughed.
I used to get lost in things.
In the fields, in untying knots, in books, especially in books.
I deliberately took wrong turnings just to see what was there,
and hid under my bed with a book and a torch and spoke to no one.
I felt so disheartened when I found my way again.
I used to create.
I crafted, sketched and wrote for hours at a time.
It just poured from my fingertips. It was only completed when the smile came.
A bright, beaming smile, bursting out of me. I would burn with furious pride over 8 lines of mispelled rhymes about a purple monster.
I believed the only things you own, are the things you make.
Now I am uncertain.
Tentative, unsure, and above all; Silent.
Now I only move with a destination in mind.
I am economical and perfunctory with my movements.
I don't know how to use words anymore, the language has changed.
The pen feels uncomfortable in my hand, while I agonise over the exact right words.
Being lost frightens me, and seems like a waste of time.
Creating things (non-edible things) are just extra pieces of baggage you must carry around. Pointless and deflating, they chew their way into every part of your brain to fester and breed.
And people know when you've got poems gnawing your thoughts, and they will instantly distrust you.
But now.
Right now, as I near the end of this train of thought.
The Mover awakens within me. I smile and crave company.
I have a sudden yearning to once again take a wrong turn.
I will not sleep tonight.
Mar 3, 2012
Mar 3, 2012 at 6:54 PM UTC
Looking to the west I see a perfect rainbow
Tucked under and lifting a symphony of cloud
The sun beams in lay-lines from its horizon.
Yet, the scientist who explains this phenomenon
Cannot describe my feelings for such a spectacle
Cannot describe the song in me that dances
The miracle of light and spectrum.
—-
You are mighty, you are ethereal
Your many fingers rake aberrant their spatulas of light
Your beauty makes all else ghastly or at least ordinary.
The trifles of each day’s turnings are insignificant in comparison.
A conscience of orb, mist, shadow, light
The Gods derive pleasure from your presence
Else their thunderous growls bemoan your magnificence.
—-
There is no darkness just the absence of light
There is no cold just the absence of heat
There is no disbelief just the absence of your benediction.
Uncapturable, delicate, infamous portent.
In the implausible silence you are where I worship
Without beginning or ending
Yours is an ultimate mantra.
Aug 12, 2011
Aug 12, 2011 at 4:13 AM UTC
Legs rusting in cement
re-barb poles of anchoring
but no foundation suffice
for the feelings of neglect in childhood
the bricks arise
the mortars set
but in a misshapen pattern of mangled misanthropy
and charred remains of humanity
a family is for one thing,
comfort in an odd place.
holding to conformity,
telling you who you are, when you are not.
when it all goes awry, the suns still in your eyes,
eyelashes cant curl enough to make you pretty in asides,
poems monologues that you speak don’t take time to preach,
pain and hiding that you try to flee from during human touch or human speech.
I cannot handle myself much less others.
I cannot speak with anyone so I have to speak with you.
Or I have to hold back a heart mired in loving glue.
horses died to allow me to roam, trees die still to make my home.
I still cant fashion pictures true of a family of five with six that are real
alive alive
I jig and strive to dance away my hate for life
it waltz's its way upon my ears and kills my familiarity fear
I want life in its sake
I want death timely
we all want things that just feel right,
feel just fair.
I want Disney land to not hurt when I get to the entrance
because it all turns out right
suburbia is not a Moasist country frilled with soulless black eyes
no sparkles.
all the glitter is very much silver and also the gold of the joys of souls
the way I feel is that if these wrought iron fencing’s could help to divide me any more
I could be one with them. Solitary atom.
They could be my home. They could coincide with differential turnings in my brain and eventually destruct me into molecules that would inherently be of their own. Be singular
but in the current state of matters.
I must depend upon all matter to be the one thing that holds me together
what life is this?
this makes me brittle
makes me short
controls me into any contortion that is to them beautiful
for now
I must be beautiful.
**** that.
To contort and retort, when we only wish to wobble and pulse with Brownian motion. My own happiness should not derive from people; I wish to not be near nor around in any small sequence,
they are merely dead to me.
Non-animate.
this is the platonic family we create.
This is life that we see from dead, dank, and sorrowful eyes.
Pity.
Forced.
Relations.
Consummate. Indelibly.
You people should be ashamed of yourselves for forcing love. By any means.
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 11:33 PM UTC
Who is it?
..
What is he doing?
---
Crouched
Hidden
In the shadows of the doorway?
----
---
Should I answer!
Should I tell you
Need I make you find out
For yourself?
----
(Little child
In my arms!
..
I am here
To shelter you)
---
---
Even New York City
Sometimes might seem
A very ordinary place
---
--
All the newsies from 1935
Are still alive
In the tunnels of Hell's Kitchen
Though the trains are gone
__
(And I
Too
Am
Always
Around somewhere)
--
You too
Shall never die
Never
---
Live righteously!
-----
The story shall linger
Forever
---
(We are now in:
REVOLUTION TIME!)
---
--
..
We
(Who never die)
..
Linger forever
Soft!
Slow!
Easy!
--
We enter our
Eternal story
We stand
Forever
--
The story
Thru all turnings
Thru all spinnings
----
--
Crouching in doorways
Hidden by shadows
Yes!
Yes!
Now we
See we are seen
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 4:45 AM UTC
Left home, ended alone,
Many travails, trials that cut,
The odyssey of his lashed life,
Took a tremulous toll of atonement,
This lamb whose only consolation,
Being left over at the jeweled altar,
The merciless downing days of droll
And loss, the cruel, blanched turnings
Of uneventful fated choice into ruin,
Never actually knowing his target,
Throwing darts at the sun.
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 1:37 PM UTC
I am lost, and the cave is blue
All facets of it, some faded, some sure
Crystal tears flicker on the jagged
White eyes, the stones speak nothing
Merely blink as the turnings of lights
In keen grey wells of silence
My life, as a ragged brush, paints
The night to be raw and torn
Leaves the canvas blank for a moon
Throughout the sky are pinned
My letters to the world, flip-flopping
As wild wind horses hop about them
But in the day, in its darkness
I can recall nothing of the colours
The walls scuttle away from me
And the cave, though endless, shrinks
I sit down into the shape of an insect
And feel the firm embrace of lone
Of stone, I begin to feel myself of stone
I rush to the waters, they rush to me
Bleak blue turns me over, takes me
Through months, I sail its roudy mouth
Blissfully unseeing and faceless
Until the coin of the sun flips
And blackness washes everything clean
The sea still, sags to rock, entombs
Itself and me. I am lost, and the cave
Is blue
Jul 16, 2023
Jul 16, 2023 at 2:52 PM UTC
What you see in me
Is someone who is so used to isolation
And so good at disguising it
That to be present in the world is a surprise.
Everything rushes in
Everything touches me all of a sudden
And I am overwhelmed.
I don’t know if it’ll ever go away.
I don’t know if I want it to.
It brings a certain strangeness out in me
As I struggle to contain and conceal
Not my otherness
But my sudden immediacy.
I feel the floor pressing up against my feet
And the soft turnings of quiet things in the ground so far below it.
I feel the sea.
I feel the past and its whispers.
I feel the way a tree must feel
When struck by lightning.
Somewhere an artist carves the face of a statue in a quiet room
And something new is born
And I feel that.
Somewhere someone flings their arms wide
Leaning out across a railing over the water and laughing as the wind holds them up
And I feel that.
Somewhere lovers find each other for the first time
Somewhere a child learns a new word
Somewhere, someone tired and peaceful breathes for the last time
And I feel that
And that
And that.
It rushes in,
It all rushes in.
At once I am painfully in place
And scattered across the world
And it all swirls through me.
I am so used to being silent inside
And filling the space with music and words
Petty distractions and safe thoughts
But
Suddenly
If I had a thousand bodies and souls it would not be enough to hold all this
And I am disoriented
Like I’ve been thrown into deep water only to realize I can still breathe somehow.
It is that confusion you see in me.
It is the memory of before
Of having been everything and nothing all at once, forever,
And then suddenly contained-
I had forgotten,
But part of me remembers every time I see you
And it is always a surprise.
I don’t know if it will go away.
I don’t know if I want it to.
It’s why I miss things,
Why I can’t focus,
Everything in the world calls to me,
And everything in me sings back,
“Please don’t let me go again,
Please let me sink my hands into the earth and grow there
And never feel alone again.”
It’s a hell of a lot to act normal through.
Oct 18, 2018
Oct 18, 2018 at 3:41 PM UTC
I want to say:
good morning
in words newly-minted
bright, sharp-edged
with shadows, alight
this June morning.
At my desk
I sit before a still-life
of small things
treasured, some made
by your quiet hands,
others evidence
of our journeying:
precious times of
smiles and gestures,
delicate long exchanges,
photographs of course.
And in the foreground:
a trio of felted vessels
lined with thread,
my daughter’s tile
of blackbirds on a bough,
and this book in miniature,
rich in marks made
by the tides’ turnings.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 4:33 AM UTC
sweet decay
silent prey
life death
cycle bay …
beauty lush
blossom green
stillness intact
moves Being
water flowing
ancient well
going going
ocean bed.
Exquisite light
dim inside
reveals turnings
Great Design
unfolding
leads
onwards
bright
Eternity
Is
Heart’s Delight
Aug 11, 2010
Aug 11, 2010 at 10:38 AM UTC
Left home, ended alone,
Many travails, trials that cut,
The odyssey of his lashed life,
Took a tremulous toll of atonement,
This lamb whose only consolation,
Being left over at the jeweled altar,
The merciless downing days of droll
And loss, the cruel, blanched turnings
Of uneventful fated choice into ruin,
Never actually knowing his target,
Throwing darts at the sun.
Apr 18, 2013
Apr 18, 2013 at 1:50 PM UTC
expertise irrelevant, a knowing
recognition where & when & why,
venn diagram inflection points
intersect, and also confine
the nirvana nexus on a line of dots in a
movingly motion connected by a formula that
has an equal 🟰 in its muddly middle the man’s best sole instructions to her only
solve! me
when in an moveable interaction
the power of rushing baking cake & it’s filling
is akin to trying to hold back a bucking stream that cannot both be ****** or dammed
running words, making
you obsessed to remember
every detail, but commas only,
never a period interrupting continuity no
essential points of exit and entry
and yet…
you cold stop to breathe
wondering how came you
to be a container intertwining
motifs and motives, desires contradictory,
control contrives to be a
controversy pressured pressed
together, and you want to stop, go,
turnings to touch,
she be tablet and he the pen,
and you wrack to remember each
detail, the poem complete or will
confusions reign supreme
and all the fantastical
schemes are shot to
hell, ink spilled,
house doused
and she good naturedly laughs at you,
cause she knows poet better than himself
and forgives him his inspirational
dazes and gazes of confusion
because it is hard to give when
giving birth to
a dream’s obsessive demands
to love one more
than the other
each deserves no rival, just a final fini,
she wants the same, but the heart
is where he keeps hid, exactly
what she needs, so forgives a
little, because loving a crazy
man after all these years
is taking the excesses
costly cause that be
an insanity desired,
what she loves,
the dusky duo
inside him
a constant
battle re
fusing
resolving
the man’s contradictories,
that she cherishes him for
more, his mired mind, more and
laughs at mores, cause it is never ending;
his more is feature why she loves him very best, she showers and laughs, he rushes in
puzzlement featured on his face, so invites him in and as he falls to his knees in a watery
embrace, while grasping her hips, she
states with a finality: “‘
”let us discuss the importance of proper endings”
Oct 4, 2024
Oct 4, 2024 at 4:38 PM UTC
Shortsighted
we have eyes to see
things in front of us
present tangible reality
worldly ideas and substances
superficial fear, worries, cares
what do we eat, drink, wear?
where do we go, what do we do next
where shall we see ourselves in five to ten years
so we make our schemes and plans
and we grasp for control
In trying to be king, we end up tyrants
enslaved to our own tyranny
Influenced by darkness
Shortsighted
Lord, have mercy
give us eyes to see
beyond ourselves
ever-present eternal realities
divine providence, contentment
In abundance or lack, we have everything we need
And that we are worth more
Than any temporal worry or care
Lord, give us eyes to see
our lives not as mere earthly things
but to build ourselves heavenward upon the steadfast Rock
that we may be humble, as a speck of dust in the grovel
under the sovereign kingship of a good and Holy God
that we may not waver at the tossings and turnings of this world
Lord, give us eyes to see Your light
That we may live with faith, hope, and love - that we may live with vision.
Nov 29, 2020
Nov 29, 2020 at 1:33 AM UTC
Dylis stands on corners,
rose lights above her head.
Cars drive slow at turnings,
seeing special offers.
The ones of great disgrace,
but she is there to proffer.
They would skulk away,
into a quiet place,
driver moves her downards.
‘Til he can’t see her face.
He slips a fifty into her palm
She takes it and smiles,
knowing she’ll need not do that,
for a lengthy while.
Her objective is but living,
hence she must keep giving.
Men and women… any creed.
All the seedy pleasures that they think they need.
Aug 8, 2012
Aug 8, 2012 at 12:00 PM UTC
Left home, ended alone,
Many travails, trials that cut,
The odyssey of his lashed life,
Took a tremulous toll of atonement,
This lamb whose only consolation,
Being left over at the jeweled altar,
The merciless downing days of droll
And loss, the cruel, blanched turnings
Of uneventful fated choice into ruin,
Never actually knowing his target,
Throwing darts at the sun.
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 2:52 PM UTC