"unseasonable" poems
Black crows circling wildly
Above trees silhouetted
Beneath darken skies
Swirling clouds, towering
Static charged excitement
Ripples cross the air
A wave of heat blown
Across the ground,
By a dry breath, of
Unseasonable wind
Bending saplings to
Kiss dusty, dry earth
Time stands still poised
Restless, wild world
Waiting
For Odin’s hammer
May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015 at 4:47 PM UTC
the sky over i-95 is violet, the color of the deepest bruise
like the one you actually remember getting, that eclipsed
all the little gray-green ones from
tripping over belgian blocks, and mismeasuring the distance
to the doorframe.
the sky over i-95 cannot hold water very long
and soon it doesn’t.
you look out the new-car window
silent windshield wipers and you remember
the other times it’s rained on your occasion
(with stinging peroxide sometimes, and
sometimes gasoline, when you had a match
in the glovebox,
but mostly water).
you never stopped liking the way the big trees swayed
in the not-quite-hurricane
or the deafening of the drops on the car’s aluminum backbone.
you used to trust they’d never fall, they’d never flood
the crashes you passed rubbernecking were never fatal
traffic would always clear
you’d never be late.
as you watch the oversized leaves support the waterweight today
you think how every bit of that is gone from you now
siphoned slowly and quietly but
unmistakably gone from you now
you think in matter-of-fact sentences because you are a grown-up:
“I do not trust the trees. I do not trust the raindrops.”
quieter you think
“I do not trust the future. I do not trust an empty building.
I do not trust the movie theater. I do not trust the ocean,
or the river. I do not trust water
when I can’t see the bottom.”
you get a little philosophical as you get hungry and the exit numbers get high
“I do not trust the highway. I do not trust me. I do not trust the curtains
to keep me safe when I sleep, and I do not trust waking to bring me morning.”
you think in matter-of-fact sentences because you are a grown-up,
but also because that’s how the thoughts come.
there’s something that you do trust
that’s enough to warm you as this unseasonable may
comes to a close.
you never stopped liking the way the big trees swayed
and you think how they might fall
but they haven’t yet.
you think how it’s kind of okay not to trust them:
you trust something else.
(pain is lucrative.
so is smiling.)
a female cardinal perches outside the window of
the room, just as you arrive to leave again
and you think how she's just as pretty as the
candy-apple-red male, though she's dark against the tree trunk
and when you’re back to celebrate the years since leaving
you might even trust that tree trunk
and the girlcardinal you have to squint to see
you might also trust morning, then,
and night.
meantime, the sky lightens:
sundrops while the rain comes loudly still.
May 26, 2013
May 26, 2013 at 5:29 PM UTC
docking on the fringe of a dry spot
the rain died in...
i set sail in solemn siroccos, fraught
with endive and lemons...
no chop. flat listing in the leaning theme
impervious to words lost
my ship dips in clean drink
and dark thought.
away, my anchor prods starboard
planks of salt wood...
clangs in a grog of lurching halt
raw ***** mauve tossed - and shriek blind.
a pennant of mock cause.
a scant curl of smoke, seized
in unseasonable Hypnos.
a whimsical Charybdis -
a thing i choke on.
i scoff
cough a terrible pen
my inkwell, topped off
with black pond,
quill qualms
of love's
dross.
the serenity of my tempest
and the skipping stone it cracked,
now, white sharks, prowling the yonder
of the nearby,
in debt to a far gone, yawning
rings,-
concentric to the naked eye, you clothe not.
lest the raiment be
the Emperor's
new lot.
A Stitch of Odyssey In Epic Fail...
to get more gone, but less lost
a journey of a single step
begins because... and
just because
you stop
stopping.
Feb 3, 2013
Feb 3, 2013 at 1:54 PM UTC
I am often too hot and too cold at the same time.
But I'd prefer a negative view of myself to a false one every time.
It is a heavy thing to be caught in the gravity of two great cosmic forces. Greatness and obscurity--how they rend the soul caught in their tidal struggle.
Truth and perception how great a chasm between you and how many black bodies have been broken by the Fall to the bottom like a lead-fed whip laying into history's backside laying open our hopes and dreams, exposing love to unseasonable air. It spoils in light obscured by empire's greed.
I can't tell what's real. I don't know how to dress for this.
Oct 1, 2017
Oct 1, 2017 at 3:08 PM UTC
Not a banana, my life is like the leaf.
My youth uncurled straight and tall
like the opening of a translucent banner.
Sensual curves waving to
the florescent lizard to guard a hunting place.
The warm breezes ruffled my maturing skirt
as I grew in fiber strength.
The warm night rains weighed me down
heavy with diamonds sparkeling in the sunlight.
Unseasonable winds whipped me
into a double fringe.
In my golden year
my fiber strengthening a base for the uncurling of youth.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 11:08 AM UTC
We are just back from an autumnal walk.
Gold, red, and yellow lead green by a nose
And the sharper neighbourhood edges are softened
With leaf piles that fill the dips and voids.
We are just in from a loop around the 'hood.
The unseasonable warmth has even coerced
Teenagers onto patches of parkland to play ball
While their digital assault rifles go unused.
We have returned from exposure to the environs.
A long summer of incremental house adjustments
Pauses for the interim, so neighbours can await
The soon-to-be revised ostentation index.
We are inside again at the end of an autumn day.
Dying rays of sunlight filter through windows and half-bare trees.
Free warmth leaves us to rely upon the furnace
And savour anonymity among the bricks, stucco and vinyl.
Oct 12, 2013
Oct 12, 2013 at 5:10 PM UTC
it is three a.m. here
and the unseasonable cold
has etched itself onto the knobby bones of my spine
and eats voraciously at the
callous of bone and metal
that now suffices as my
lower left leg...
in answer, i sit in front of the
newly stoked fire, as close as i can without becoming fuel
and await the painkillers sweet surcease.
i drink russian caravan tea
and as always,
it draws my thoughts to you.
the time spent with cup in hand and eyes full of laughter.
the way you rolled each teabag up into a neat little
parcel...
and those times of ceremony, birthdays and
big announcements.
when the tealeaf was allowed to swirl joyously and swim in the squat blue teapot,
releasing the aroma of
a gypsy campfire...
all rowdy, with celebration
and then served with the
orange and ginger cake,
(so **** good)of which,
i never did get the recipe.
always, the tea, served
in fine bone china
the tea, visible through
the white translucent pottery..
and we still, playing at being, civilised and grown up...
the tears slide,
gently,down my cheeks
to fall and be comsumed
by the warm hearth...
as the gypsy songs fade
and i do not know,
whether, it is from the pain or sad and grasping grief,
that they come...
but they come.
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 1:47 PM UTC
Lightning bugs laid dead all over the island.
There had been an unseasonable snap of cold
previously unheard of in the area.
Blurred thoraxes coagulated near the cattails out back
in dark masses,
the length of a baby or so.
Unraveling your fingers across their dark husks,
I watched them ripen
like black bibles.
Tattered forewings wincing
in the half-
morning rain.
Fireflies produce a "cold light",
devoid of infrared or ultraviolet frequencies.
This chemically produced light is uninhibited by logic
or necessity,
occupying a lithe minnow pool
between science and beauty.
At night along certain river banks
fireflies exhibit near perfect phase synchronization of their light emissions,
exposing the framework behind every living thing.
This is the nature of our midnights
when no one else is left.
Aug 10, 2016
Aug 10, 2016 at 3:32 AM UTC
today, i saw
a million things that used to be.
i saw the pavement breathing hard in the mist of
rain, tears filling the dark spaces and the
cracks, where
so much water once welled up and ruined e ver y thing.
what i had to do was:
listen to the coolness,
that unseasonable pressure on the points of
my desolate cheekbones. feel
my eyelashes just brush my skin,
and in between looking i had to see,
and in between seeing i had to look.
things were just fine,
it is okay.
we see the shine and sparkle of tall buildings and we are all tempted
to forget the slap of bodies against water and pavement, the hopeless way that
people curled up and died.
But if you look closely, if you turn your
head away from the sun and look out
across the crystal city, more clear than ever, if you open your eyes —
you will see that today,
the pavement is crying.
Feb 5, 2010
Feb 5, 2010 at 9:23 PM UTC
Unseasonable warmth
embraces my winter white skin,
inspiring me top off the island of Manhattan.
I drink in the novel Brooklyn air
and inhale 3 ****** Mary's.
Tracing my reflection in the mirror,
unsuspecting.
the ***** glowing in my veins,
illuminating my fate.
I exit the bar,
floating like a blind firefly
into your cosmic black.
Feb 26, 2016
Feb 26, 2016 at 8:20 PM UTC
The autumn leaves float down around me,
While summer sun shines overhead.
Winter winds blow harshly down.
I hide my hands inside
My coat, and notice
Nature can't make
Up her mind
About
Me
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 12:21 PM UTC
Intensify my thoughts.
Make the unseasonable thing in life delightful.
Untangle my interlaced knots.
When you are exposed will you be spiteful?
The heart of mine is leaking
Accept my unmet qualities that you see.
The heart of yours is peeking
Please don't wag away from me.
Instead be fain to stay,
And see what will become of this lovely day.
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 10:08 PM UTC
Set foot, stand on ground
Wakes up early before kickdawn
Rich in culture, filled with bask
Thanks god, for every grain, for
every rain,for every ray and another day.
Back to fields , growing seeds
Plucking the mist of irrational deeds
Running the treadmill of ounce dearth.
okay,let's count
when no rain, an unreasonable pain
Unseasonable rain, yet it flood the drains
Glimmering sun, adhesive air,
verdant emerald of vegies and corn
Filled with sweat of one's brow
They live life in a dense mess
Farmers are in complete distress
Apparantly with no fruitful harvest
The whammy bankers further oppress.
Their light erades like a blaze
They in darkness try to elope
But whirls in deep evil-twin
And find life hard to cope
then they pick up a rope
And hang-up all their hopes!
With this, one less counts the population
And this is how it will end,
the population count will decrease
No doubt with cost of an earnest gem!
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 26, 2018 at 1:08 PM UTC
old man with stormcloud hair
eyes indistinguishable from
an unseasonable sky
and I wonder
if perhaps he's blind.
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 3:41 AM UTC
They’ve bitten and held
through the month of October’s
unseasonable warmth.
Now, they’ve excised on the
first day in November and I
bleed.
The leafless branches of the
bluffs, show among their
unshed brethren like the
claws of the undead.
The work becomes onerous
despite my ambition;
the cold weather creates
problems unsolvable before
the first ice forms or the first
snowflakes fall to stay.
There is no reward in getting
done what needs done.
Leaving the house before sunrise,
coming home as the last of October’s
auburn hangs in the sky,
knowing soon that November will
leave her bleak blackness in the air,
robbing me of the rose-colored clouds
that decorate the morning commute.
The fangs of September are pulled
for this year, but the rest of these
benumbed months will gnaw
until the warm juncture’s thaw.
***
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublications 2017
Nov 1, 2017
Nov 1, 2017 at 11:34 AM UTC
Do you like Biltong?
will you buy it from the market ?
Can you trust its hygiene ?
Is the rain a bother for you
its been most unseasonable of late
or are you happier for your garden ?
At least the cat's going to see the vets on Monday,
shes not been herself lately.
Sunday is still fine
all important questions are in the open
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 8:36 AM UTC
the leaf no longer drips
out side my window
the sky has for the moment
stopped it's weeping,
maybe the moon got it some
hokey pokey ice cream,
it is cold enough, the puddle pools
of water have little lace doily edges
and the hibiscus bushes are frosted
the weatherman states we are having
an unseasonable cold snap....
this is the first time the tuxedo rex
has seen frost...he is beyond freaked
and has gone into the linen ccupboard
to seek solace and warm, we find him
curled up under the guest towels
the paths are icy, as well my bottom knows
this is not a drill, we don't normally get this
cold here and frankly we are under prepared
we have towels covering every hangable surface
the dryer running constantly, the fire is eating wood
at an alarming rate...and the wifi has become unstable
and now the leaf is dripping again...
do we remember what the sun does...Do we???
Jun 17, 2017
Jun 17, 2017 at 9:17 PM UTC
it had become
quite clear
that her escape plan
lacked ingenuity
when she was drafted into
the coldest war in
her history,
her only armor
being her
slow, simmering
rage
but not a single weapon of
words
it was the cool,
unseasonable August breeze
that crept into the nape
of her neck
warning her to
speak not
for the art of effort
is poetry
alone
Aug 7, 2017
Aug 7, 2017 at 4:03 AM UTC
It is direct. My victims are gallantly weakened:
There is a firmer death for the restoration
Than groan: there is a tamer howl than me,
Who in the heat of thy unseasonable favour
With peaceful shadows. Communion foundation, thou in whoever
Quivered lustily, each criminal is there appeared
Hazard of thee. Interspace, half-hour, I ask cheerfully sooner
I wait, religion,
Till he return, and menace him at the conference.
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019 at 6:37 AM UTC