"tuscan" poems
sienna cities
sparkling saturn sunrises
sangria skyscrapers
sublime.
you are kaleidoscoped
through and through
with window blinds, bed sheets,
and street signs.
they call you modern art
and hang you on a wall
of white
and beige.
your color bleeds.
you boil
and no *** can hold you.
you speak and
wind chimes cry,
ringing into the empty night,
morose.
a ballerina can only hope
to move as gracefully
as you do.
your eyes light up
like tuscan sun cities
sizzling sirius sunsets
school bus skyscrapers
divine.
i’m hooked on your city glow
brighter than tokyo.
Nov 15, 2018
Nov 15, 2018 at 1:46 PM UTC
Venezia, its musical key of brick and shade
And the canals in rejoining polyphony
Sweeten the dour Church-ear.
From the impasto knife and loose brushwork,
A thumb-smear of waves and gently-bristled strife
Rise to assumption of the cloud-submerged bay,
Mural of cristallo, only-light without landscape,
Made too from the winds of Murano,
Its clayed blowpipe of waterways molding
The lagoon of blown glass and bouquet of colored sea-shadows.
The Tiber lies on its side, like the lion and fox,
Licking its paws at empire’s dust,
A drifting gaze of water that already foresees
The swift-run northward to Romagna,
Where the veined fur of the roe will succumb…
A ripple twitches like one dark claw of the Borgia…
The watercolors of the Arno are a fresco
On the wet plaster of the lips of Firenze, Tuscan fire-dream.
Or like the warring leg in curve of counterpoise,
Sprung foot-forward to the daring world
And arm slung down in stone-victory
From this valley, too much like Elah,
With taunting eyes turned from the Medici toward Rome.
May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019 at 10:06 AM UTC
I'm eating kale to slim my waist
Lord knows it's not because of taste
It took some while to appreciate
The leafy green I love to hate
The fibrous queen of super foods
Can satisfy nutrition prudes,
And comes in leafy shapes galore:
Curly, Tuscan, dinosaur
For variation I can gnaw
This crucifer sautéed or raw,
Just as is, or baked as chips,
A smoothie blend to please my lips
But having said all that, I'll add
Too much of anything is bad,
And I've been craving, as of late,
A change of greens to grace my plate
I now peruse the produce aisle
To find the foods that make me smile
It's time to choose my next big thing
Like watercress or collards green
I'll greet my new nutrition trend
And say goodbye to you, old friend
Kale, we've had a lovely run,
But now my time with you is done.
Jul 19, 2020
Jul 19, 2020 at 4:16 PM UTC
I built a Greek column
A Tuscan column to be precise
It's about three floors in height
I used materials I didn't know I owned
Shimmering and glistening small white oval pebbles
Flat and fat ones
Sand, best of its kind
Limestone with all its magical properties
And Nautilus shells from the beaches of Callao.
I wish I have built it for looks only
But I did it for me
It fits well between my neck and naval line
For when my earthquakes threaten my core
Jun 3, 2019
Jun 3, 2019 at 7:41 PM UTC
Women are born with heavy feathered wings
Hands that hide starlit craters
Celestially they spin in infinity and find each other
Stroking the softness, in awe at the wonder of the unashamed mystique
That perpetuates newly hatched faces
A world without the incessant need for reassurance
Which towers intimidatingly over the forest border
Small ordinances that keep themselves airless
No longer striving for the greater force of flight
Clipping away their feathers with garden shears, hosing down the blood
Tuscan architecture abandoned countless ages ago
Ancient in idea and aesthetic
I’ve wandered many miles to reach such exotic visions that have been dead for so long
The heads of kings lined up on the edge of a waterfall
Their bodies still holding onto the swords they clipped their wings with long ago
A little further, a river emerges and spills cold water from the azimuth of God
There was a communicator present at the time of cleansing, unbeknownst to me
To accept ones sins is to be cleansed of them, don’t you agree?
He asked this with shaking shoulders, his robes unraveling to reveal the scars on his chest
One for each pectoralis
I looked away in tragedy
I enter the wooden gate, into the Macedonian fortresses of old
My torso has been replaced with a harp, which I feel these princes pluck so sensitively
I hear the timber echo throughout my chest and vibrate in my throat
My back has merged without consent to a beast that bends backwards
The harp strings have been torn
I am now mute
Raising the weary head of the sleeping dog and the sleeping disdain
I slept in an isolated piece of land untouched by human hands
And sank into the forest floor
In which the grass and all living creatures decided I had left the physical form
My eternal resting place
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 24, 2018 at 5:54 PM UTC
Fill for me a brimming bowl
And in it let me drown my soul:
But put therein some drug, designed
To Banish Women from my mind:
For I want not the stream inspiring
That fills the mind with--fond desiring,
But I want as deep a draught
As e'er from Lethe's wave was quaff'd;
From my despairing heart to charm
The Image of the fairest form
That e'er my reveling eyes beheld,
That e'er my wandering fancy spell'd.
In vain! away I cannot chace
The melting softness of that face,
The beaminess of those bright eyes,
That breast--earth's only Paradise.
My sight will never more be blest;
For all I see has lost its zest:
Nor with delight can I explore,
The Classic page, or Muse's lore.
Had she but known how beat my heart,
And with one smile reliev'd its smart
I should have felt a sweet relief,
I should have felt ''the joy of grief.''
Yet as the Tuscan mid the snow
Of Lapland dreams on sweet Arno,
Even so for ever shall she be
The Halo of my Memory.
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Ice-cold Orange juice
with a teaspoon of
Brown sugar
sipped with my
Red-matte lips
under the
Yellowish-tuscan sun
Thinking of those
Little White lies
tossed with
a Grey stone
sunken deepdown
the Blue lagoon
lost in a
Blackhole
Purple thoughts
Pink-positive thinking
with a Green tea
on the side
Hoping for a slight chance
of Rainbow after
this storm
Feb 24, 2019
Feb 24, 2019 at 7:12 PM UTC
I sprinkled sunflower petals in the warm water,
to make it gold.
Then dipped my body quietly in the bathtub,
to wash my tainted soul.
The morning light peeked through the lemon coloured glass,
while the fading fate dissolved in the pearly waves of my lash.
My lifted hand reached for the sunlight,
the feeble fingers swayed like dandelions.
A swollen gaze perched on the broken mirror,
a burning sensation impregnated my chafed lips; turning them bitter.
The beauty they preach about is not divine,
nothing in this world stays sublime.
The saffron tinted ancient walls,
kissed the amber tiled floor
Everything fire; everything gold,
yet no power can assuage the murkiness of my soul.
My dear Van Gogh how could you think?
that the yellow, if you eat, will lift your spirits?
Nov 19, 2018
Nov 19, 2018 at 4:37 PM UTC
I AM an ancient reluctant conscript.
On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans.
On the march of Miltiades' phalanx I had a haft and head;
I had a bristling gleaming spear-handle.
Red-headed Caesar picked me for a teamster.
He said, "Go to work, you Tuscan *******
Rome calls for a man who can drive horses."
The units of conquest led by Charles the Twelfth,
The whirling whimsical Napoleonic columns:
They saw me one of the horseshoers.
I trimmed the feet of a white horse Bonaparte swept the night stars with.
Lincoln said, "Get into the game; your nation takes you."
And I drove a wagon and team and I had my arm shot off
At Spottsylvania Court House.
I am an ancient reluctant conscript.
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*Walter, I just want to sit on my *** and **** and think about Dante.*
—Samuel Beckett
All this fractures the Wolf. The ancient leaves
amid the ancient woods, wind riffling wind
in eddies she can see but she can’t hear,
the braying of a fatted calf which she
could eat, if she could hear thy call, O Wolf.
The tympani pretend to be a thunder roll,
the crashing cymbals mean to simulate
the distant lightning, all the strings—cello,
base, violin and viola—play the
pizzicato of rain commencing…
The Wolf sits to watch—what?—the floodlights fill
the stadium? the baton poised? the crowd
about to have their daily dose of not
quite silence served up yet again? She hates
that they have come to watch a prophecy.
It’s raining full blast now, the Wolf’s exchange
for music, how things balance out, how rain
fornicates in the forest, with its pools
and puddles, how it tenders lakes and rivers
and shadows… It can’t be! Ahead she sees him.
She sees Dante, the poet of the prophecy,
the one she has to drown. It’s why she’s deaf.
She will not hear him wail. **** him so he will rot
in hell before the other poet comes. **** him
and spare the world another poem about
another world. The rain and music grow
so dense around her soul. She is so quick,
too quick for him to flee. She drags him still
alive, drags him to the lake of his heart.
Sink and die. In Paradise only bubbles rise.
The tympani pretend to be a thunder roll,
the crashing cymbals mean to simulate
the distant lightning, all the strings—cello,
base, violin, viola—play it soft,
so soft, as if the rain is about to start…
The Wolf and I walk the slopes of hell.
When Farinata and Cavalcante
rise up to ask her, ‘Who were thy ancestors?’
and ‘Where Is ***** she howls. O Wolf.
O Tuscan. She howls.
Aug 25, 2010
Aug 25, 2010 at 5:51 PM UTC
**
Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,
Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won
From the hard season gaining? Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius re-inspire
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire
The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise
To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice
Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air?
He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.
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The good wife has gone mad, the cows have gone dry.
The dog has up and died, and the cream has turned.
And now I can not find the new can of lye.
And even the gray cat seems to be concerned.
When the wee one came to help harvest the rye,
I thought him to be childlike, but soon I learned.
Though Celtic in his speech, from the Moors he came.
Dancing and playing, everything was a game.
My house guest brought nothing but trouble to me,
no fanciful friend, but a Pixie you see.
Rispetto, ( Italian:: “respect,” ) a Tuscan folk verse form, a version of strambotto. The rispetto lyric, in its earliest rhyme scheme, has been usually abababccdd.
May 26, 2013
May 26, 2013 at 11:34 AM UTC
Once upon a time, we shared a Tuscan moonlight,
A reflective glow illuminating our worlds
Thousands of miles apart,
But shared nonetheless,
And it’s ochre glow hummed down on you
Just as it would thrum down on me
Several hours later.
Once upon a time, we shared a Tuscan moonlight,
Sharing a cool breeze after a
Day oppressive with heat that
Cloaked the world like a long absent grandmother,
And fruit flies hung in the air like a beaded curtain
In your world
And gnats hung in the air like tossed confetti,
Frozen in time,
In mine.
Once upon a time, we shared a Tuscan moonlight,
In the same timezone,
In a village described as “Italianate,”
As though that might mask its very
Californiance,
And we dreamt of a summer day in Italy
With countless stairs and winding paths
That unfurled like a waterfall onto sleepy piazzas like a
“Once upon a time . . .”
And a shared Tuscan moonlight.
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 11:24 AM UTC
(this festive traditional Central-Italian dish serves entire populations of citizens)
INGREDIENTS:
♦ faith in God
if unavailable, any stable moral-ethical framework can be used
♦ esteem for traditional cultural values
♦ willingness to say what you think
♦ hatred of Political Correctness
1) Wake up in the morning and breathe
rinse your mind and other ingredients well from previous day’s brain-washing
2) Refuse to believe media propaganda
ask friends/family members to ignore mainstream media & close Facebook accounts
3) Believe that God created Man and Woman in Genesis
4) Refer to God as He
main ingredient, beware of fire if Feminists/Genderqueer activists are near stove
5) Define family as 1 man + 1 woman joined in marriage producing children
let ingredients simmer. Add a pinch of absolute Biblical doctrine if desired
6) Critique Cultural Marxism in ALL its overt & disguised manifestations
7) Dissent from the One-World Techno-Narcissist mindset
algorithms and search-filters complement this dish, but feel free to serve it on its own
Persona Non Grata pairs well with a full-bodied Tuscan Chianti, or Montepulciano, but is especially enhanced by any vintage where the Grapes of Wrath are stored.
Apr 1, 2019
Apr 1, 2019 at 5:55 PM UTC
when the Tuscan sunlight trickled through the blinds,
pouring gold specks into the room
and your light hums reverberated into my ear
as we laid in tangled sheets
it dawned on me that
home was never a place —
home was a person.
this is it, i thought
this is home.
Apr 8, 2019
Apr 8, 2019 at 9:34 AM UTC
I have in me a bit of Tuscan sun
The wildness of mistral
The calmness of a Cezanne village
I often walk around the countryside of Pissaro
And see the colors, still abundant, undefeated
I stroll around the lilies and the harbor of France where Manet painted being thrown out of his house, not able to pay the rent
I dance with the beautiful girls in high society Parisian parties of whom from Zola to Maugham spoke about
I learn art in silence, in the bright orange color of the day drawing the French young girl
Whose face is like Madonna
Her innocence, her laughter, her flawless body
Excite me, breaks me, creates me
I walk with clean head and red wine in the streets of Montmartre
Searching the gone and dusted studio of Renoir, Picasso, Monet
I stand exactly there where there is nothing old except the moon
And the Sacre Couer
In the morning I take the first train to Auvers Sur Oise
And walk into the cemetery
Where lie in the gorgeous French sun
Vincent and Theo Van Gogh
I utter to them, "Can dream ever be false?"
It is when I heard the footsteps
I turned
The girl in the yellow dress stands at the gate of the cemetery
Whom I draw every day but never captured her beauty
The French girl
We both stand there as it is
As if
framed
paused
Frozen
We, the Impressionists!
Aug 8, 2020
Aug 8, 2020 at 8:45 AM UTC
and so I'll catch the next train
ride a buzz to Tuscan, AZ
where everything looks the same
except the sunrise,
which always changes your mind,
into gold!
and although it's been sold,
you can still reattain
coaxed and waxed,
old souls
We're estranged
and when it rose that's when I knew
I'd always sing of you
sea swept over me
covered me in
hopeless romanticities
when it rose, I knew
I smoke my last cigarette
Fill my lungs with regret
and lunacies
an inescapable dream
I always knew it'd just be me
leaning against the door of an old Chevy
praying the heat won't **** me
but secretly hoping so
I feel it burning through the soles of my feet
something that was just meant to be
but the king knows his place
and I've no say
we're under the same watchful sky,
you and me
Jan 8, 2012
Jan 8, 2012 at 9:38 PM UTC
I could see all neith the flowing dress she wore,
though the moon played its tricks on my eyes that night.
Curled red hair flowing like waves upon the shore,
yet could not hide her fairie wings from my sight.
All night I lay with her on the woodland floor.
We laughed and loved, though she was gone come daylight.
And each night since I've gone to the wood to find,
naught but a fairie ring did she leave behind.
Ottava Rima: Italian stanza form composed of eight 11-syllable lines, rhyming abababcc. It originated in the late 13th and early 14th centuries and was developed by Tuscan poets for religious verse and drama and in troubadour songs.
May 24, 2013
May 24, 2013 at 5:57 PM UTC
The god from the past came stalking,
Came clambering over the hill,
He’d woken first thing in the morning
With a hangover, fit to chill,
Those Roman debauches with grapes and wine,
The reds and the whites of the Tuscan kind,
The fruit of an overburdened vine,
Were sapping his energy still.
He’d rubbed at his eyes in the dawning,
And wondered where everyone went,
For nothing remained of the Roman baths
Not even a soldier’s tent,
And where was the maiden he’d last embraced
The sweet Lucina, so fair of face,
Whose long held virtue was laid to waste
When the force of his love was spent.
Invidia’s green and brooding eyes
Had watched as he laid her down,
Had mixed her potions to match his lies
As they struggled, there on the ground.
She thought, ‘No god should be so remiss
As to offer a rival a tainted kiss,
From now, I’ll act as his Nemesis,
He’ll sleep while the world turns round.
She poured him a draught of her potion then
The last of his thirst to slake,
Though Empires rose and fell again
She vowed that he’d never wake.
The buildings crumbled and turned to dust
As the god dreamt long of his love, and lust,
While Nemesis thought her scheme was just
And the field turned into a lake.
The ages tired and the gods retired
To their mansions, high on the mount,
But he continued to sleep and dream
More years than he could count,
The god slept through in a dream sublime
While generations were buried in lime,
Two thousand years was a blink in time
For the gods in their banishment.
He woke on a chilly Autumn day
And found himself in a lake,
Shivered once, and then strode away
For his heart had begun to ache,
He walked down into a valley plain
Green and fresh in the Autumn rain,
When out of a tunnel streamed a train
With a scream, and the squeal of brakes.
‘By Juvenal!’ cried the god in shock
As the carriages streamed on by,
Then up above, like a giant gnat
A vehicle flew in the sky.
‘The world has changed since I fell asleep
The gods have fled to the mountain keep,
And men have conjured a giant leap,
The world has passed us by!’
He ran headlong through the tunnel
Hoping to find Lucina again,
And that was the great explosion that
Nobody could explain.
The diesel engine was rendered flat
With carriages piled on top of that,
While Nemesis on the mountain sat
Her tears flowing like rain!
David Lewis Paget
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 8:49 PM UTC
Oh to hear our pens together
scratching out dreams
on Italian linen paper,
while espressos cool
in the noonday breeze.
Wiping creme from your wind burned lips, my toes find your cycling socks
and our eyes meet as if to ask.....
let's stay another day in Toscan....
Rome can wait.
May 1, 2016
May 1, 2016 at 3:08 PM UTC
Witch-elms that counterchange the floor
Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright;
And thou, with all thy breadth and height
Of foliage, towering sycamore;
How often, hither wandering down,
My Arthur found your shadows fair,
And shook to all the liberal air
The dust and din and steam of town:
He brought an eye for all he saw;
He mixt in all our simple sports;
They pleased him, fresh from brawling courts
And dusty purlieus of the law.
O joy to him in this retreat,
Immantled in ambrosial dark,
To drink the cooler air, and mark
The landscape winking thro' the heat:
O sound to rout the brood of cares,
The sweep of scythe in morning dew,
The gust that round the garden flew,
And tumbled half the mellowing pears!
O bliss, when all in circle drawn
About him, heart and ear were fed
To hear him, as he lay and read
The Tuscan poets on the lawn:
Or in the all-golden afternoon
A guest, or happy sister, sung,
Or here she brought the harp and flung
A ballad to the brightening moon:
Nor less it pleased in livelier moods,
Beyond the bounding hill to stray,
And break the livelong summer day
With banquet in the distant woods;
Whereat we glanced from theme to theme,
Discuss'd the books to love or hate,
Or touch'd the changes of the state,
Or threaded some Socratic dream;
But if I praised the busy town,
He loved to rail against it still,
For 'ground in yonder social mill
We rub each other's angles down,
'And merge' he said 'in form and gloss
The picturesque of man and man.'
We talk'd: the stream beneath us ran,
The wine-flask lying couch'd in moss,
Or cool'd within the glooming wave;
And last, returning from afar,
Before the crimson-circled star
Had fall'n into her father's grave,
And brushing ankle-deep in flowers,
We heard behind the woodbine veil
The milk that bubbled in the pail,
And buzzings of the honied hours.
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I was singing to an Italian love song,
wondrous lyrics,
a rythm that held me within a dream.
I wrote a requiem and played it to the world
and so here I am dancing once more
to the beat of my own drum.
Lyrics cached to savour alone
the beat of this heart goes on
and on
and on
and on....
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 2:22 AM UTC
Myopic we see
Blinded by our civility
Just as there are hidden microscopic worlds
There are lands hidden from our eyes of roaming, gigantic gods
Jesus came into the earth
and silenced the gods of ancient Rome
No longer do they sing under the Tuscan Sun
Desert Gods now roam the land, the battle they have won
The Roman Gods once alive, and life giving, are no more, their ways gone, and their people permanently converted.
Forgotten Buildings
Broken Statutes
Copied Notes
The bones of dead gods
Jesus, The Destroyer of Gods, experienced life on the level of immortals
in a way we will never understand
Vanquishing foes of hidden lands
And today, the Gods battle for supremacy, for allegiance
Darkness and Efficiency
Nature and Tranquility
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 4:46 PM UTC