"unmown" poems
She had hung it up from the mantelpiece in her bedroom, so when he entered the room there it was. It was suddenly lovely and he immediately imagined her body flowing into it, flowing from it. Standing close to the dress he brought his fingers to the fabric, touched gently, stroking then, as though it already held her form and substance.
Stepping past thoughts of her that so stirred his body he entered the pattern of the dress. It was a meadow in southern Ontario. July, when already the sun had bleached the profusion of grasses: water chestnut and papyrus sedge. He had stepped from the untidy veranda, past the pond, and down the rough track between the fields unmown, uncut, left fallow. As he entered the breaks of woodland between these swathes of grassland, deciduous leaves, dry and brittle from the summer's heat, were strewn on the path, and between the trees clumps of bramble bushes with berries of red and blue, black and purple.
There was no wind. The only sounds an underlay of crickets, his footfall, and the sharp mournful cries of geese on the now distant pond.
He saw her like an apparition standing motionless at the woodland’s boundary; her dress at one with all that surrounded her. When he came close and placed his hand on her shoulder he could smell the sweet dry earth mingling with her body's sweat, a hint of her *** as he placed his cheek against the shower of printed pollen amongst the leaves on her back.
Back in the late afternoon bedroom he heard her move about in the kitchen, and the spell broken, he turned away and went downstairs.
Several days later, as they prepared for bed, she slipped the dress on. As she stood in the lamplight smoothing it against her flanks, adjusting its fall across her ******* he felt himself faint that such a thing of beauty could be a joy forever . . . and beyond.
Oct 14, 2012
Oct 14, 2012 at 4:55 AM UTC
The decaying mansions of English language
Rot and recede
into teenage grasses
with each unspoken year
The hired help have left their hair unmown and surrendered their uniform dress
Content with the neglect of nature
taking its timely course
When the architects and master masons of linguistics
Survey their forgotten plans in the heaven of English literature
They are not dismayed
but patiently sit and sit
The pristine edifices of the classics
Once grand and clad in deferential brick
Stand scaffolded and unread
The doors unlocked, ajar and hopelessly inviting
Into the library of the English canon
The dusty cloak on the carpets of grammar
Sheets thrown over the disused armchairs of archaic words
Echoing the plink of the out-of-tune pianoforte of the perfectly crafted short story
Bathrooms of formal poetry
With the rusty plumbing of metre and rhyme
Whereas the temporary outhouses,
hastily arranged huts of slang and idiom
are adorned by the living grasses of new forms,
creepers of half remembered dreams
mulching leaves of half formed thoughts
forests of half forgotten loves
writhing in living incompleteness
Which will in turn harden and fossilize
And we can then rue the passing of our once organic lingo
Dec 14, 2009
Dec 14, 2009 at 10:18 AM UTC
red ink and red lipstick
there is nothing so red and gruesome than
a fireheart, a bleeding heart, striking matches and flickering
on cold white sheets and with your skin white as poetry
(T. S. Eliot's sighs, Bukowski's love bites, a blush red as Plath)
and your bed is neatly made, and my sheets are a field of unmown lilies
and the creases are pressed out, changed,
scarlet lipstick streaks and crimson ink washed away.
I swore-- like a sailor who's lost her heart to the waves--
you could point to your ghosts
and I would burn them with all of my fierce and my fury
and all the fire that I had.
I wish I was your sister that no name nor space could come between
our fingertips, our morbidezza fingertips like Mandarin porcelain
and the space between our fingertips is the space between heaven and earth.
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 18, 2012 at 10:01 PM UTC
I think I've got some neighbors
In houses that are on either side
But I can't say that I know
The people that live inside
Perhaps they moved out last month
I don't ever see them around anymore
Their car is gone and lawn unmown
And the dead bolts locked the door
Well, that's what my window shows
I havent been out myself to see
But I'll tell you one thing I know
I sure am sick of my complacency
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 9:39 PM UTC
Lazing in the arms of nature
beneath
the warmth of passion...
whilst gentle breaths
enflame my skin
tenderly held and stroked lovingly
a smile creeps in shadow
slowly across my lips.
For sun breeze and unmown grass
so comfort me
when you cannot.
Jun 24, 2012
Jun 24, 2012 at 12:44 PM UTC
wind rocking the night
shakes fences
unbolts wooden gates
falling rose petals
pirouette
across unmown grass
morning unwraps me
rolling sleep
onto sunlit floors
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC
Twisted, curled and straight.
Many of them reticulate.
Some are rough, some gloss.
And few of them crisscross.
Through mountains and canons.
Some desolate and barren.
Some through foliage unmown.
Ending of all is unknown.
Unalike yet all attract and allure.
With open arms tempt to explore.
Each path inviting like a *****
Still another I search evermore.
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 6:00 AM UTC
When I moved away down to Billups creek
a tributary flowing into the Mississippi
and saw unmown wild fields of golden grass
tall trees everywhere
and the dawn on a horizon
for the first time
saw country girls as
wild fillies,
oats and hay as fun
blue jeans
and got my first buzz with a knot
of 'bacco
I came along real quick
got the slang down tight in seventh grade
and my four-wheel drive pickup
at seventeen
got used to no rock stations
on the radio
just
adapted
to
ridin' country roads
and BBQ
and sassy lasses
and extended family's
and time spent
outside
and golden
fields of nature's
bounty
the sun is
brighter
down south
for a ****
Yankee
Sep 21, 2017
Sep 21, 2017 at 1:30 AM UTC
My heartlet is crying, crying.
It means it’s hurt of lying.
It means it’s been stepped on again.
Its faith has been killed disdain.
And again it’s like an abandoned whelp
In a field of unmown grass with no help,
Is looking for path and crying, crying.
It means it’s in lots of pain. It’s dying.
Apr 13, 2025
Apr 13, 2025 at 5:21 PM UTC
Yesterday I went out of the city
To where the nature lives.
Where silence still exists,
And dogs run free.
In this place full of foreign life.
Me; a mere stranger trying to fit in.
I lay myself in the unmown grass,
reaching till my chin.
Feelings of a mountain range.
Free, strong, wide, calm.
A courageous beetle scouting my slopes,
A fly landing in my palm.
There are so many places to wander to,
So many countries to undress.
But I would always go back
To being a mountain range in the grass.
Jul 16, 2020
Jul 16, 2020 at 4:39 AM UTC