"upriver" poems
I walked in, careless,
to my ankles.
It seemed all right.
the water licked smooth,
around my lower bones.
the tickle of cold
the bump of rocks
silty sand,
squishing up into
the spaces around my arch.
another step, and the pull.
the tease of the tide, lap-lapping
like a hungry feral kitten at found milk.
the snickering of the current
told little lies to my calves
about the depth and its strength
seducing and tugging.
Comecomecomecomecomecomecome
I looked upriver. Dark sunk
into the trees.
Crows sailing up, over the line of evergreens.
Solid.
I awoke suddenly from my murky forward-trance.
Halting my progression.
In over my knees.
Violently chilled.
Clarity dissolved upon my senses,
Remembering my native element,
I spoke my rejection to the liquid Rake.
'This is not my place.
as long as I have breath.
and I will not lie with you upon your bed.
You have no thumbs, for coffee,
you have no heart for truth, although
secrets, of this, I am sure you hold, many.
No mouth for reading,
and trust-
I already have circling my finger,
and am tied in my heart, to one with eyes and lungs.
Some marry the sea, but I have married a Man.'
So I placed my heel behind my shoulder,
yanking hard against the rules of the moon,
up-tripping
backwards across sudden boulders.
Feeling the sick squirm of a game
almost lost,
a hallucination perhaps of-
the gurgle of a defeated laugh
chasing me back to the bank
I pushed away.
On the shore, damp-dry grass of another month
lay beneath my feet
The River showed me shimmering calm.
nature just nature again-
a vast. sleeping creature with no possible interest in Eve. but
From the droplets of water on my legs dripped a separate truth.
I turned away from the leaves and fish.
drying and donning shoes.
And went all the way back
a Flower still,
to The Land.
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 1:52 PM UTC
If Wishes were for fishes
All my dreams would come true
Thankfully I am fish, I know my sign
I know how to make my dream be the rewarding kind
I have dreamed
I swam upriver
I am here at the top of the United States
I am ready to plant my feet
Just about where the USA and Canada meet
I found my home, my ranch, my dream
Now let me move and fuffill my lifes' greatest dreams
The yards have gardens apples and pears
There is the sound of cows everywhere!
Miles surround us of land that we have rights to
At night the sky full of stars the only lights to look up to
Cougars and bears will be seen
But we are country women, we are keen
Montana born, country mean
Don't ya'all worry
I got this shit..all I need now is a riffle, an ax
and maybe a 4 wheeler machine ; )
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 12:04 AM UTC
"This is the end, my friend…"
Take refuge in the Golden Years.
Retire to an inevitable monastery
plopped on a suburban mountaintop.
Immerse yourself in the lost writings
of Nikita Khrushchev and Harry S Truman.
Learn to cook gizzards and meditate.
Find solace in obsolete atomic weapons,
enlightenment in the raw, butchered
expressions of the naked thermonuclear.
Wangle, ****** fire, and maneuver.
Get in touch with your inner Eichmann.
Devour baskets of tasty deplorables.
Stop clinging to guns and religion.
Love the fascism of the ordinary.
Become content with mere content.
Stop waving daggers at the innocent.
Wash yourself in the blood of the lamb.
Accept that Woodstock was futile.
Admit you can’t get no satisfaction.
Penetrate the goddess of unreason,
and come screaming to your senses.
Declare the dawn of the Age of Onanism.
Keep your fingers out of Pandora's box.
Bid farewell to the ghost of Joe Hill.
Depart the smothering, smooth life
of lust, corn flakes, and competition.
Expand your mind in a mushroom cloud.
Travel upriver to the ****** of Darkness,
legendary source of honeyed generation.
Attain new heights of perfect despair.
Discover the latent bliss of cassowaries,
rooted in their strong disdain for kale.
Play poker with the spirits of the dead.
These are your days of lucky revelation.
Lick magic frogs and witness lost dreams.
Arrive at the perfect wisdom of what is.
Everything and nothing, just what it seems.
Apr 6, 2018
Apr 6, 2018 at 5:15 AM UTC
Season's greetings, or the omission of a hand to hold
when it's winter bleak, miserable and cold.
Two weeks away in the sun, or campsite summer-lit mornings
and sand in our sandals from an evening on the shore.
The dew puddles are forming,
its stagnant river sister foaming
with cream lips at the edge of the white water;
she's whispering well-thought-through white noise
because she knows of the future to come,
the upriver source told her that you've
two seasons left to sort yourself out.
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 2:31 PM UTC
from the bank
I see the ghost of a pier
old posts standing solitaire
a ramp rotted, long gone
moored to one stubborn beam,
a bass boat, tethered to time, rocking
with the whims of the waters
fickle, but steady
storms upriver may hasten
the current, bloat the stream
though the flow never ends,
lapping against the hull
hiding inside are more ghosts:
phantom footfalls of fishermen,
odors as old as Eden, sounds
which once made songs
by those who cranked the motor,
manned the rudder and cast the lines
into the depths, seeking a tug--a pull
that meant dinner, a small success
a simple surrender of one species
to another, from beneath the surface
into the sun, a sublime suffocation,
then stillness before the gutting
many a day ended this way
the boat buoyed again to the dock
bellies then filled from the sacrifice,
the waters licking long the wood
Mar 28, 2017
Mar 28, 2017 at 9:14 PM UTC
singing across the river
stood on the banks
of the Thames.
I was not alone,
a beautiful woman,
dressed for old Japan,
stood and sung, also;
we harmonised in a dance
not our own
as the Thames took us
upriver to Oxford
and far beyond
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 5:07 PM UTC
We meet on a
a crowded street
and stand still,
like a pair of boulders
caught in a river
surrounded by salmon
as they swim upriver,
flowing by and
paying us no mind.
Off to the side two men
share a meal al fresco,
laughing into wine glasses.
After what seems a lifetime
you touch my face,
and I touch yours.
And I remember
every minutia.
We've been apart
for so long,
and yet it's like
a garden revealed
when the snow melts.
The freckles,
the spots,
the creases
beside your lips.
And I watch with glee
your goosebumps
rise and can tell
by your smile
you can see mine.
"Get a ******* room!"
One of the men hollers
with a chuckle
as the other guffaws
and nearly chokes
on his bread.
We look to them
and laugh,
a laugh shared
by strangers
knowing love
when they see it;
of a shared humanity.
-
By Aleksander Mielnikow | Alek the Poet
Nov 23, 2020
Nov 23, 2020 at 1:00 AM UTC
This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.
I never got to swim the backstroke
before Brunswick Basin bled
Lake Olympia from amidst her oak,
before Deer Creek went dead.
*The streets'll burn, the bodies break
and the blood washed away by beer.
The streets burned, bodies broke
and we're still here.*
Shadow people wander the sidewalk,
been here since the bombs dropped.
Never got no noisy television,
just watch the streets and shadows in them.
I'm pushing up just like daisies
and pulling them up for fun.
Convinced that I'm going crazy
from the trips that I get on.
*Jane says she cannot get it:
"something hidden...back when children."
You're always looking for the road
where we used to drink too drunk,
where you look to have again
what we had so long ago.*
Do you feel it coming?
on Earth His will be done.
Collapse a long time coming—
still nothing new under the sun.
Summer is for the living.
That's a bubble-bursted, sun-dried reason.
It's the end or I am fibbing,
still live up the rest of the season.
*First came the flood then spilled blood.
Had anyone caught on of that to come
you know we'd never have let it begun.
But it had:
got you, your mother, and dad.
Surely there was nothing we could do
but hunker down, get a job, and rue
the day they brought us into
the Old World and buried the New.*
I hear tell that downriver
the water gets warmer;
I hear tell that valley below us's
a hotter n' hell, body-ridden bowl of dust.
—
I hear tell that upriver
the trout they run thicker,
the water cooler, air smoother, and **** sticks thinner.
I wanna flee up that river
but I'm not that good a swimmer.
How do we know?
We think we're smart,
in fact we're geniuses.
But we're still sitting
and can't stop talking about...
This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.
Aug 17, 2013
Aug 17, 2013 at 1:20 AM UTC
Honey is the blood of the sweet and the rotten
With sugar-scabs on the back of their hands.
Their hands, stained to the wrists with pulp,
Waving to us from a roadside stand.
The people that live on this small mountain
Eat fallen fruit and peel off the flies.
His hands stick to the wheel as he drives,
Upriver, where the air is wet and heavy.
We swallow our words, thin like skim milk
And I smell the thunderstorm fresh on his clothes.
It covers the stench of his sweet rotting bones
Jun 25, 2010
Jun 25, 2010 at 7:35 PM UTC
Galloping through the field there is nothing that can stop me now
With the midmorning sun glinting against my golden hide
I feel free
Moving through the wind with my mane flowing behind me
It feels as if traveling upriver against the grain
I feel free
I rear up to the sun that is sending down warmth and guidance
No real destination, no true reason for the ride
I am simply free
Jun 17, 2012
Jun 17, 2012 at 10:39 PM UTC
On the St Lawrence
going upriver today
there may be gold in them hills
that I see lay before me
I will do me some panning and see
what pans out,
panning is what my life's
all been about
a nugget or two will do
no need to be needy or
any need to be greedy
just taking some time and
what I pan will be mine.
Waters are cold the higher
I get
shingles
slippery
wet.
I'm reflecting
on a man with a pan in his hand
a grizzled old face
a gold wedding band.
When I head back downstream
it'll be
to champagne, caviar, real coffee with cream
or is that just an old prospectors pipe dream?
I see diamonds that flash off the noonday Sun
as if
running atop of the water
I'm rich,
but I wish it was gold.
It's silent mostly
except for the water and birds
and the words I cuss out,
did I mention
that's what panning is all about.
I scramble through the brambles that
grow over my mind and try to find
a way out,
I guess panning is about that too,
Nov 13, 2016
Nov 13, 2016 at 1:39 PM UTC
I bled beautifully,
Like a fresh teabag in hot water.
The trickling scarlet had me in a trance,
And beckoned me with a beguiling smile.
And so I swam on, upriver.
Against the current
Despite the inevitability of failure,
Of disappointment, danger and death.
It wasn’t hope, no,
More so the inability to distinguish
Disaster from desire; affliction from affection
Because they’re closer than one would expect.
And so I swam on, upriver.
But of course,
I was glass—
Flagrantly transparent—
And at last,
It all shattered into twelve shards
So fine,
That I couldn’t even tell which were yours, and
Which were mine.
Jul 3, 2014
Jul 3, 2014 at 12:02 AM UTC
Water flows
In places which pardon
Ziploc bags full of apologies
Floating upriver
Downstream
Under bridges
The ocean swells
Like the cold midnight air
Entering a pair of lungs
So I take
Another breath
Sep 8, 2016
Sep 8, 2016 at 11:24 PM UTC
It's not very helpful, him being so woefully inadequate, but you have to take what you can get even if it has been washed upriver by the tide,
someone's being taken for a ride
and I think that it could be us,
oh jeez,
it's like the twilight zone,
if ever a dishwasher wished he could work from home
that dishwasher is me
She says,
stand up and
take it like a man,
I say,
I am
and she just laughs.
Feb 26, 2022
Feb 26, 2022 at 7:04 AM UTC
I stood on the shore
Feeling the grainy pebbles in my shoes
Watching the Towers of Industry roll in the waves.
Great they were, the waters, not the towers,
For they blocked the sun and it was only seen
Through its glassy body, stabbed with the silhouette
Of those mighty towers.
We walked on together.
I climbed the cliffside
And met the Metal Birds
Crashed on their nests in the rock
Their thin skin dull and
Crumbled away making poor handholds.
Climbing up together, we saw the river.
We watched the sweet scent
Float away in palpable colour,
Leaving my head heavy and yellow
Like the flowers it carried with it.
Upland calls,
Upriver there is more to see.
We walk on together, always.
Jan 12, 2015
Jan 12, 2015 at 12:04 PM UTC
Birds tweet summer songs to each other
Wind carries these songs along the waves of the world
Humans interrupt nature with unnatural sounds
Somewhere bears are pawing at berries and scooping them into their mouth
They're also catching salmon riding upriver to spawn
These are dangerous areas to fish but excellent fishing grounds
The wind howls
I listen to hear if it howls for Mary
Maybe it whistles a cat-call for her instead
The sun shines down
I hoard every ray in every pore of my skin
I soak the world in
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 4:37 PM UTC
Time now upriver flows,
Grasp air to feel you close.
Tears unravel hidden weakness,
Be mesmerised by nothing else.
Mind bleeds a crimson tide,
Butterflies fall dead mid flight.
Flowers smell of fear,
Nerves of mine fracture.
Worlds merge like pastels,
Blinding dreams in darkness.
Missing textures of your skin,
Sweat tasting of despair within.
Missing arrows from angels torn,
As my soul turns to stone.
To gravity dreams succumb,
Ripping heart of its triumphs.
Embrace the truth we cannot,
Reality, dreams of you distort.
My purple veins of pain crack,
Each breath a dying act.
Forever one or else young,
We cannot ever be undone.
If your soul becomes a ghost,
A close friend, death, I shall host.
Feb 25, 2015
Feb 25, 2015 at 11:10 AM UTC
Steady thumping, thumping.
The boat travels downstream.
The water is brown, from silt.
The current is swift but calm.
Trees line the edges of the river.
Green foliage, thick on both sides.
The sky is blue with white clouds.
A bridge passes overhead, with cars.
Downriver, a large load is being pushed,
to the locks in the dam up ahead.
The water is deep now and dark.
An eagle cries out, and lets fly.
I bring the small vessel to a stop,
and watch all around me.
A train on the side of the water,
the barge moving away,
trucks on a freeway above,
the hum of shipping goods,
and the beauty of nature in one.
Tranquility, and constant motion.
I slowly begin to turn around,
and begin the steady trek,
upriver to where I began.
Jul 6, 2019
Jul 6, 2019 at 1:49 PM UTC
1/15/2015
sitting behind the shed at the seminary
where we'd rolled off together for the first
time that night in the fall
but that's another story.
stolen lighter flick,
first hit's my honor
and soon my manibular ramus
is reaching towards orion's belt and
i realize with that it's your
favorite constellation and I think about how
I Have To Laugh plays, the Fleetwood mac
hurting the crests of my pink pulled lungs
swaying said manible to the slowly winding
upriver bass remember when LSD was legal?
she says and they used to test it on citizens?
it rips up through my own breath with the
guitar mucking creshendo and the words
it's over, it's all over and i'm glad to be free
and i laugh, i cannot stop it,
i look up at your favorite constellation
we promised we'd look at at the same time
at new years and i feel very bad because it
is a long time ago perhaps even two weeks,
and the tobbaconist laughs when we ask for Ozium
and I feel bad i don't think of you that often
but then i stand up and say to my friends
hey where you going i'm hungry
and then the fleetwood mac's a story
on itself from the past and i feel my
legs growing on and i realize feeling guilt
because of you
is thinking of you
and i feel a bit better about myself
and dismiss it completely
and keep walking
making sure to cut across Alexander Hall
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 9:41 PM UTC
There once was a river,
that flowed two ways.
It broke all of the rules,
and achieved the impossible.
It grew and grew, then shrunk
and dipped into darkness.
Upriver it flourished,
downriver it forgot.
Never was there ever
something quite like it.
It left no tracks.
Appeared in a whisper and left in a rush.
The breath came from the wind and
the course was where ever.
Aug 12, 2014
Aug 12, 2014 at 1:03 AM UTC
#D Vanlandingham
*ah, this rolling this flowing////
are we all not the same when the sun sets sail..
when the tides, no longer take out, but brings in--
arms at sides, all?
Who steals from who, then at that time
when the music within the dance
mesmerizes all.. and there is no longer place
for dissention.. or strive, for gain?
Everything becomes seen,
when there is nowhere left to hide
and with the full removal of judgment
there is only light inside
(but it has to be wanted, more than the sin,
of holding on)
where then is there shadow
when all that blocks, has up and gone..
the sun-filled sails that bring us home
on tall ships we each, on--
main.. fore, and mizzen; staunchly-braced
amidst an in-the-face-of-death, laugh..
shrouds, proudly tight causing
the most beautiful of harmonics,
from fore boom.. through jib, to gaff--
A war-less armada, this stunning fleet of peace
sailing together, upriver.. through the jungle//
and into the magical advent...
into the beautiful world, of full release.*
#
Dec 28, 2020
Dec 28, 2020 at 9:30 PM UTC
on the lake, anonymous swans honk droll in golden sun
dappling on the surface of their planet of waves
sparkling with silver midges, darting amid shards of twilight
creeping over a hill like a vagrant sage
begging for a purple coin.
other birds, flock to wet stones in deep thought. mindful of nothing but the wave.
pecking through to wet sand, mottled with earth tones and shattered glass
from a campsite, 3 leagues upriver. the air moves like a shy bride.
over rose petals blushing scarlet in the shadow of a sleepy star
nodding off the horizon...
just carnival lights in a cornfield.
and your eyes.
all night.
May 6, 2018
May 6, 2018 at 3:04 PM UTC