"votive" poems
I.
“No doubt they’ll sing in tune after the Revolution.”
-Kamarovsky, Doctor Zhivago (film)
Everyone seems to clench his fist these days
In solidarity with ephemera
While setting fire to green recycling bins
Hurling someone else’s bicycle through a window
Armed with their undergraduate degrees
The comrades liberate a coffee shop
Wifi-ing the revolution of the day
Empowerment by beating love to death
Loudsplaining authentic victimization
Posing for selfies with a stolen ‘phone
II.
Their inhumanity seemed a marvel of class-consciousness, their barbarism a model of proletarian firmness…
-Doctor Zhivago, p. 349
Everyone seems to clutch his flag these days
In solidarity with a past that wasn’t
While setting fire to misspelled cardboard signs
Hurling someone else’s beer into a crowd
Armed with their lurid Confederate tats
The Something.Right liberate a dumpster
Bull-horning the counter-revolution
Empowerment by beating love to death
Bellowing their Reconquista of stench
Posing behind their cheap gas station shades
III.
“I used to admire your poetry...I shouldn't admire it now. I should find it absurdly personal. Don't you agree? Feelings, insights, affections... it's suddenly trivial now. You don't agree; you're wrong. The personal life is dead…”
-Strelnikov to Yuri, Doctor Zhivago (film)
Some few embrace civilization these days
In solidarity with humanity
While lighting one small candle as a votive
Whispering an Ave into the Light
Armed with wonder through pen and flute and brush
Recusants choose the liberation given
In singing of the eternal verities
Self-empowerment happily denied
With love, with poetry, music, and art
Celebrating life on this summer day
Aug 12, 2018
Aug 12, 2018 at 5:09 PM UTC
She may not have been your prototype teen or hiree.
Or of the masses. Or herd.
However, she did walk into a McDonald's
approach the counter
emit an esoteric exchange for help with the cashier
and with knowing eyes
the cashier directed her to the starting gate.
Now
with application in hand
and blue ribbons in her eyes
she was off to the horse races,
nervousness riding on her shoulders.
In my eyes, she was a longshot to win,
where I could see her shoes falling off
before the race started.
And her imaginary jockey falling off her horse
from laughing so hard,
for she presented herself through the restaurant
and a job interview with a Starbucks frappe,
totally oblivious of her unwrapping.
It would be like turning up for a Yankee's job
in a Red Sox outfit.
Who would do this?
As the rubberneckers, I looked on.
Incredulous.
She took her seat at a vacant table
carrying her youth awkward.
Her looks of brown hair, eyes, and raw innocence
complimentary.
But those jeans, high risers, with holes in the knees
with a white Bebe shirt that hugged her shape
shouted trendy but not job interview.
Oh, my.
She continued the procession
extracting info from her phone
and filling out her application.
No doubt with votive candles at her side
and prayers on her lips.
And perhaps blue ribbons awaiting.
After all, this was her foot in the door.
It was at this time
I had an epiphany moment
tears welling in my eyes
as I slipped on hamburger choices
and sipped on past life on a teether,
totally oblivious, too.
It was like looking in the mirror.
Her youth and awkwardness and my growing decadence
towards the light.
When the manager came in and summoned her
to the interview table,
which was located in the dining room,
I saw a little kitten purr inside of her,
where her eyes nervously checked her surroundings.
At first introduction,
the reddening blush on her face and Adam's apple
stood pronounced
but her low voice was choked.
Almost inaudible.
As the manager put her calming hands
into hers
the light turned on
all foreboding escaping.
All misplaces and tense faces replaced with aces.
This was a defining moment for her,
as the golden arches braced her feet,
making all the rubberneckers, me, proud.
Logan Robertson
6/6/2018
Jun 7, 2018
Jun 7, 2018 at 12:19 AM UTC
in a dark of frenzy it boils up inside
until summarily and inexplicably
see the colour between brown and blue
more than see it, immerse myself in it
swimming slowly in its clouds
see the colour between brown and blue
everywhere votive candles light
the colour between brown and blue
with slender tapers that touch a life
any life, your life
casting strange shadows, loose shadows
between the colour of brown and blue
children swarm, children with bright white
starvation hair, children with hands
like small worn mittens
who raise red swarms in hot worn out
death laden dust
dust that cauterizes the nostrils
with the stench of penurious insanity
the colour between brown and blue
that inveigles a purchase of flies
bottle blue, black blue, green blue,
swarming blue, swirling whirling blue
a black and blue confetti of flies
then the sudden zero of the
colour between brown and blue
hair raising, command faith
willed, willing, mumbling, murmuring
the excitement of writing between
the colour of brown and blue
trees shake and tremble
words regurgitate themselves like hot
food, the bark, write
now fully electrically charged
seized by the colour between brown and blue
forget everything else, write, write more, more, write
trembling with sudden shudders of merciless
vowels, madness penurious pencil
moves across, demanding paper
pushing worn words, worthy words whittled by use
words not yet written, words of wonder
oh what words
beautiful, baffling,baleful, words
with beastly beatitudes, words that conjure the mind
words between brown and blue
that leave you skinny like a stray dog
words so demanding leave you shut up in an
airless abattoir of high energy and low residue
the colour between brown and blue
where everywhere is everywhere else
touched by the flames of the colour between brown and blue
Oct 3, 2013
Oct 3, 2013 at 11:01 PM UTC
http://hellopoetry.com/search/poems/?q=Betterdays
**as is my wanton wont,
when stumbling
upon a new voice,
the passed baton
is herein handed off**
am old man.
my poetic voice is just
memories that are
repetitive lies and lines.
speak in simple sentences declarative.
this is nature's way.
darkness approaching is indeed my
au courant poem, mon actuellement.
I have seen better days.
I have read betterdays.
now I am upset, distraught.
here come another young
hot bright votive voice,
and I am being asked to believe that there are
still words that raise hopes of
betterdays.
her bed chip crumbs, delighting,
leave crumbs of pleasure in my soul.
l like her big word poems,
that leave me, fill me by:
*siphoning all in a parched gluttony
leaving behind a viscous residue
and few glassine portals
into a reflective world*
better yet I love her
mothering little god poems,
letting me remember little boys
who once loved a father
*little god love
radiant is thy smile,
smallboy love, exudes from you,
like a flower god's nectar,
bestowed, with negligent love,
upon a mother's world.
i will drink my fill,
everyday, whilst i can,
for far to soon will you
grow up.*
don't speak eastern Australian,
tackers and doona's, no clue,
blue cats are a foreign breed,
but the cat of this starfish mother,
shares my literary tastes:
*him, nestled,
on the second, to
uppermost stay,
of the third
bookshelf,
in the study.
he has filed
himself,
between,
ogden nash
and proust
and it is there,
he plans to stay.*
let me not go on and in deeper, lest
I delay you from her pleasuring
thy tasted untested senses.
so here I am all grumpified
(at my age, you can make up your own words)
unsure if un or satisfied,
knowing that a woman,
word whips me into a
soothing frenzy of creamy
morning coffee verbosity,
a captive taker of life's
ungrandest moments,
poems of them,
make to glory come.
somewhere in the world,
a woman writes of plain goodness
of simple strife and simple lives,
makes methinks that there could be
betterdays still ahead,
better poets surely, than me,
and the day starts well
Mar 29, 2014
Mar 29, 2014 at 8:50 AM UTC
So fine,
the slender votive silence
of palms, open
to the torn banners of rain,
so tender,
such surrender
in the gesture of hands...
You pour so much
of your red earth,
to soothe and loosen
the tongue from its leather tomb
and adorn me
with a lighter burden,
too much mine, at one
with the dark, lavish earth
in all its sorrow, spun
of the sleek commotion of silk
and vanilla linens... I leaned
into the ******* of my wings,
honed from those muscular
fairy-tale dreams...
My mouth,
learned solely on a valentine's
shiny white kiss of hemlock,
humming into the cells
of the spellbound body, quelled
by vigilance, your lips
teach me now, how to go softly
over the red earth of dahlias,
in all their everlastings, your hands
deep in the soil, reap...
The resonating grail of memory,
kept in its rich loam
and coals spread over
my mouth of red, red clay,
so swells its golden hue
of rose and rhododendron,
too much mine, rising
its fevers in the fawn brown
of eyes, closed ...
Over this long,
shuddering quiet,
you come
in all your calico
to calm
the votive silence
of palms, cupped
in the earth of your hands,
so much mine....
Jan 15, 2013
Jan 15, 2013 at 12:47 PM UTC
i.
Pink doesn’t play into it, that delicate
petal of perfume & flower stuff.
She abhors it.
Red suits her better.
Red for Fridays & red for Aries.
Red for the blood her dagger could draw.
Her seal of wax is no
rosebud adhered to
fine paper.
Warrior, she escaped its letter.
With Roman candles & Roman sandals,
sword, wand & chariot,
defender of her Eden.
Seashells are her votive gifts, the
stars of her Atlantic.
It is within her reign of Camelot.
At the edge of the Earth,
her kingdom dreams.
ii.
Blue maid
a curious ***** in her armour.
But she wouldn’t flinch
if an army of soldiers came crashing in.
They are hunting the witch.
A woman can never have such power.
It is reserved for the patriarchy
to wield at will.
Up it goes.
They can ***** steeples with it.
They are stoking the fires & sharpening
the axe with it.
But threats of torture
don’t make her beg, plead or recant.
She is guilty of nothing.
Even broken on the Catherine Wheel,
Athena still keeps her
bow & quiver intact.
Oct 10, 2016
Oct 10, 2016 at 6:34 AM UTC
so
here we Are:
Arnold......Shortman,
Shorty......Meeks,
Mr......Meeseeks,
Ezekiel......Whitmore.
Morphine,,,,,,Morpheus,
Neo......Geo,
OG......Sour,
Sour......Diesel.
DeeDee's......Brother,
Cousin......Vinny,
Vinny's......Lover,
Brothers......Grimm.
Grim......adVentures,
Billy......Madison,
Hansel,,,,,,Gretel,
Chelsea......Grin.
Grimace,,,,,,Misery,
Mister......eBonic,
Bonny,,,,,,Clyde,
Kyle,,,,,,Kenny.
Kenny......Powers,
Powder Puff Girls,
"Girls Girls Girls",
Girls Gone Wild.
Wilee......Coyote,
Coyote......Ugly,
Ugly......Betty,
Betty......Crocker.
Doctor......Parnassus,
Doctor......Krieger,
Doctor......Horrible,
Doctor......Evil.
Evil......Knievel,
Felix......the Cat,
Captain Jack Sparrow:
"Captain......my Captain".
Tinman,,,,,,Scarecrow,
"Rowrow Rowyer Boat",
Bo......Burnham,
Earnest,,,,,,Vern.
Verdict,,,,,,Votive,
deVotion,,,,,,Vengeance,
aVenging......Evey,
V,,,,,,Vendetta.
Denace......the Menace,
Crystal......Globes,
Snow,,,,,,Aesthetics:
Skeletal......Shedding.
Head,,,,,,Tail,
Sally,,,,,,Jack,
Jack......Rabbits,
Magic......Hatters.
Shattered......Glass,
Glasgow......Smile,
Guile,,,,,,Vega,
Akuma,,,,,,Ryu.
You,,,,,,Me,
Beneath......the Bleacher:
Jeepers,,,,,,Creepers,
Reapers......of Seeds.
Seeds......of Chucky,
Chuckie......Finster,
Principal......Muriel,
Yuri......Gagarin.
© Copyrighted Jesse James Adams
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 12:44 PM UTC
Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument,
April 19th, 1836
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
2.6k
The world’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star;
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies;
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
O write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death’s scroll must be—
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
Which dawns upon the free,
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if naught so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers.
O cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men **** and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy!
The world is weary of the past—
O might it die or rest at last!
2.6k
IN THE POOL OF THE LOST MAIDEN SONG
1
Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.
2
Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a seamen’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.
3
Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.
4
Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the doomed, they are crying . . .
****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields.”
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 1:26 PM UTC
"io sol uno."
-Dante, Purgatorio
There I was,
the comic-tragic star of my own motion-picture,
bold beneath the springtime Italian sun hung high
--a heavenly fixture,
illuminating the gold-leaf enframed frescoes in
kaleidoscopes of colours,
baking dry the pigeon droppings upon the flagstones
they smothered,
where I, in all my self-serving recreation,
posed proudly in a costume of my own creation,
an operatic villain clad in a billowy blouse of black,
the Campanile Tower like a sentinel behind my back,
as movie cameras panned and zoomed,
paparazzi photographers capturing me
and freezing me,
in all my wicked, medieval glory,
floating and gloating in the dank aroma of the Venetian seas,
*"I'm the shining star!
--Look at me, look at me!"*
-the super-special star I always knew I'd be,
a painted parody,
a harlequin of displaced passions
for all to laugh at and see,
before slipping silently
into the ornate basilica,
dim and dark as night,
thanking Mother Mary (for nothing) as I sparked
a votive candle's light,
not really sure or caring
where my life would lead,
just as long as the Azure Queen
shed Her Grace on me,
me,
me,
...until I fell
and fell
to the mockery of a home
I made in Hell,
hard and forever and fast,
the only fool left alone in my solo cast,
adrift with no direction,
****** and lost,
me and my frivolous theatre,
squandered an an extravagant cost.
_____________
"io sol uno" means, "I, myself, alone."
This poem is a true-life story.
__________
See the Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy:
http://www.carfree.com/design/pix/sqlg110venice_piazza-san-marco.jpg
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 13, 2010 at 11:01 AM UTC
This singing
is a kind of dying,
a kind of birth,
a votive candle.
I have a dream-mother
who sings with her guitar,
nursing the bedroom
with a moonlight and beautiful olives.
A flute came too,
joining the five strings,
a God finger over the holes.
I knew a beautiful woman once
who sang with her fingertips
and her eyes were brown
like small birds.
At the cup of her *******
I drew wine.
At the mound of her legs
I drew figs.
She sang for my thirst,
mysterious songs of God
that would have laid an army down.
It was as if a morning-glory
had bloomed in her throat
and all that blue
and small pollen
ate into my heart
violent and religious.
2.2k
past wavering lights
B. Serrano and Bagong Ilog
love struck us down — sees no votive
clearing of the fog or a word sharper than any blade wrought from frays.
i have a photograph of you
somewhere in the ken of my silence
and on it paints lightsome hue
and sometimes pale when it rains.
KM 24 on a blue alloy and underneath,
a Baguio — some memories we keep
almost left by the last carriage homeward
from too much fire in our hands
only tremors could extinguish both
striking a balance and counterbalance;
the frequency of the electric and the
immense decibel of lions drowning
the disquiet. some places or some
looking back makes you want
to lose yourself in slight wonder and when
a memory comes back with the dreary
weight of its forgetfulness,
we fall asleep traipsing the steeples
of our dreams of each other
all-telling, still dizzy with the pirouette
of some distant longing bracing
the fall, triggering our darkness
and shooting out
ourselves, small,
love striking us down. arraying a triplicate
of hazy trails forking all roads
and we cannot find each other again;
throwing stones rippling
multiplied waves by the sea arriving
at separate mornings beneath
our feet,
bends on the bludgeoned curves
of love and hate ascertaining something
so unsure as a door agape and swiveling
in tense wind, tender is the night
and love continues
to smite us down, locking in, predatory precision,
running away, and away, and away
from the ache of it all.
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 7:11 AM UTC
Life's Predispositions
In the chapel of his soul
and in the steeple of his mind
votive candles burn,
bright and iridescent,
perpetual,
red, yellow, green
and blue.
He sits in there,
a chapel for one,
in a mist
of confusion,
in a mess,
searching for answers,
as his life is waning,
escaping,
like an Autumn wind
blowing the pages of his life
... stillness,
of bookmarks,
still on page one,
he hatched, once.
All around him,
dark,
and cold,
like a winter chill,
snow banks withdrawing,
his sad existence.
Still he looks up
to Jesus on the cross.
Warmth.
In the chapel of his soul
and in the steeple of his mind
votive candles burn,
large,
bright and iridescent,
perpetual,
another rainbow stretching
it's arcs for him.
He backs away.
He bemoans life,
small,
it's endowments on him.
His parent's mistake
on a dark, eerie
loveless night...
and their cutting words
"You were a mistake,"
words
that grew on him,
like barnacles
clinging to him,
eating away his buoyancy,
like a ship sinking.
In the birth of another spring,
flowers blossoms,
rivers gushing down
mountains and mountains
of pollination,
life,
he has a lone branch
waiting ... somewhere.
Such stillness.
Such stigmatization
from his parents
loveless past.
A mistake they conceded.
It had an effect on him,
darker than the blackest sheep
that he was.
What predispositions.
When the summer harvests
arrive,
fields smiling their wares,
he scowled
he scowled the corn,
subsistence,
life,
the changing seasons,
his short change
of life.
Rainbows.
Why are the birds
singing to me?
Why?
The voices
in his head
chirping,
continuing.
What message thou
bring to an orphan?
Still he looks up
to Jesus on the cross.
Warmth.
His eyes squint.
Dad, mom.
And whispers words
that don't need
to be said,
closure.
Logan Robertson
6/01/17
Jun 1, 2017
Jun 1, 2017 at 4:16 PM UTC
IN THE POOL OF THE LOST MAIDEN SONG
1
Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.
2
Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a seamen’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.
3
Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.
4
Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the doomed, they are crying . . .
****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields.”
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 1:57 PM UTC
( a vision dream )
1
Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
*And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.*
2
Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a seamen’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
*And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.*
3
Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
*And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.*
4
Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
*And the doomed, they are crying . . .
****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields.”*
Aug 13, 2015
Aug 13, 2015 at 2:59 PM UTC
everyone has gone back to suburbia,
city streets are dangerous, if you look
at someone cross eyed, it earns you death.
don’t celebrate this madness,
mourn it in black, it has a taken
a pandemic to school me again.
this a broadcast, shout out, email me
if you know how I’m feeling and can
share what other mutualities crisscross.
Do you like Jazz? Me neither.
Flouncy bouncy dresses? Nah!
Sweats? Unnecessary, I can sweat
just by concentrating.
You like me, own soulful bluesy singers,
femme fatales, who coax and croon,
wet the spun threads of subtle emotive,
who live by light of candles votive,
I live in black, day and nighttime,
write in midnight blue, a woman who!
takes no b.s. and doesn’t ever take no
for an answer...
Aug 23, 2020
Aug 23, 2020 at 2:10 PM UTC
Gray gathering
Signs fell on the musty register. Two pallid
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.
We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day. Our love was castaway
Our love was time bomb. Crossing stars, we trembled
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some
Lost ocean’s horizon.
When first we met,
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on
The paper as it now burns in my mind
Like Brigid’s fire. At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.
Anointed under the votive stars violently
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart
A rail. Our love was charmed, our love was time,
Balm. To what end this new beginning?
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 1:20 PM UTC
~
*She is not our shrine,
she prays differently
with eyes holy open,
fingers on votive offerings,
preferring her solitude
in the Tea Garden, drinking light
Tomorrow on the tarmac
one flowered suitcase,
stamped for the city of neon people,
will travel to her song,
the pilgrimage of anemic lovers
Her hoisting from water,
(ampullae in hand),
and the unique boutique
growing out of
an alabaster chamber
bring monks out of hiding
The center line of her,
where the flower blooms forth
and learns by observation,
is still an unvisited temple
Until in season of calligraphy,
when she releases the Kogai
from her hair and sits with friendly toes
outstretched in the warm intimacy of
shared water*
~
Feb 12, 2024
Feb 12, 2024 at 9:41 AM UTC
IN THE POOL OF THE LOST MAIDEN SONG
1
Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.
2
Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a seamen’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.
3
Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.
4
Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the doomed, they are crying . . .
****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields.”
Jan 17, 2013
Jan 17, 2013 at 6:46 PM UTC
Gray gathering
Signs fell on the musty register. Two pallid
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.
We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day. Our love was castaway
Our love was time bomb. Crossing stars, we trembled
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some
Lost ocean’s horizon.
When first we met,
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on
The paper as it now burns in my mind
Like Brigid’s fire. At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.
Anointed under the votive stars violently
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart
A rail. Our love was charmed, our love was time,
Balm. To what end this new beginning?
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 12:18 PM UTC
Gray gathering
Signs fell on the musty register. Two pallid
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.
We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day. Our love was castaway
Our love was time bomb. Crossing stars, we trembled
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some
Lost ocean’s horizon.
When first we met,
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on
The paper as it now burns in my mind
Like Brigid’s fire. At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.
Anointed under the votive stars violently
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart
A rail. Our love was charmed, our love was time,
Balm. To what end this new beginning?
Jun 1, 2012
Jun 1, 2012 at 2:31 PM UTC
Gray gathering
Signs fell on the musty register. Two pallid
Faces infatuate, braiding the ley lines,
Were married in a dimly lit registry.
Outside, the sky in Dublin was a dark pool,
The clouds were omen, birds, startled in
Your eyes, a flashing flue of doves, all wings
A warring coo, escaping into the dusk.
We walked a ways to that room of dreams
And dined in the Shelbourne’s Aisling room.
I was Ormond, I was Yeats and you
Were gone. Your happy tears were notes singing
Our sorrows that day. Our love was castaway
Our love was time bomb. Crossing stars, we trembled
As we talked. Two birds setting sights on some
Lost ocean’s horizon.
When first we met,
At the meeting hall, cradled in a tempest
Eye, you gave me your name and it burned on
The paper as it now burns in my mind
Like Brigid’s fire. At once, once, we were one.
Conjoined yet neither one of us a joiner.
Anointed under the votive stars violently
Innocent your heart, a spike, my heart
A rail. Our love was charmed, our love was time,
Balm. To what end this new beginning?
Jan 7, 2013
Jan 7, 2013 at 6:23 PM UTC
He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock’s eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the hidden sun
Which glows within each fiery core
And waits to be made free once more.
Their sharp and glistening edges cut
His stiffened fingers. Through the ****
Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.
Wet through and shivering he kneels
And digs the slippery coals; like eels
They slide about. His force all spent,
He counts his small accomplishment.
A half-a-dozen clinker-coals
Which still have fire in their souls.
Fire! And in his thought there burns
The topaz fire of votive urns.
He sees it fling from hill to hill,
And still consumed, is burning still.
Higher and higher leaps the flame,
The smoke an ever-shifting frame.
He sees a Spanish Castle old,
With silver steps and paths of gold.
From myrtle bowers comes the plash
Of fountains, and the emerald flash
Of parrots in the orange trees,
Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.
He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke
Bears visions, that his master-stroke
Is out of dirt and misery
To light the fire of poesy.
He sees the glory, yet he knows
That others cannot see his shows.
To them his smoke is sightless, black,
His votive vessels but a pack
Of old discarded shards, his fire
A peddler’s; still to him the pyre
Is incensed, an enduring goal!
He sighs and grubs another coal.
Sep 9, 2016
Sep 9, 2016 at 1:24 AM UTC
for Mark, on our wedding day
I.
beneath trembling constellations,
your eyes reflect orion
and i realize--
the ink of night has drawn us into
wick and flame.
fragile orchids bow at the shell of your ear,
my lips in their wake,
whispering of light and shadow and love,
violent and fierce and
angelic.
my face is pale against the wind.
your bones have all but disappeared.
II.
you are as coal and ember,
fugitive in my fireplace,
dancing songs upon my cold skin
with dark fingers,
laced into the atoms of night.
the votive flame waltzes
in its mirror of wax,
our vigil;
tremulous as the first breath of midnight,
steady as the whispers of ivory
that dust the unbroken canyon
glittering under the full moon.
III.
your name breaks open
shattering over stones like starlight--
the resonance echoes
in the spaces blurred by darkness
and i am lulled to sleep,
to shelter.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 10:23 PM UTC