"walden" poems
I see Thoreau as a token
You and my airplane ticket.
I never get it why you only declare your love for Thoreau
Instead of something darker, Hunter S Thompson,Marijuana
Or me.
Traveling in Denmark now, I guess you'll eventually head to the Netherlands.
Where your true colors shine through your eye socket.
Oh, so I still admire you
Dreaming of having a walk with you beside Walden
Having Arizona ice tea in the dessert
I beg Thoreau to win me an airplane ticket to
The unknown
Nov 24, 2014
Nov 24, 2014 at 1:06 AM UTC
So I've been thinking lately
What if
he's on a journey out to find himself
reading Hemingway and Emerson (his namesake) and roughing it at Walden Pond
smoking foreign cigars
and staring deep into coffee
to decipher the meaning of the swirls of smoke
that rise from it in the morning?
What if
he's asking ChaCha! the meaning of life
or trying out a new brand of shampoo
or attempting to set a high score on Tetris
or out burning down bridges just to see them ablaze
or doing volunteer work,
reading to disabled children at the local library?
What if
he's decided that this is all too much,
that he'd prefer to live in anonymity
trading his celebrity for secretarial work or carrot-harvesting
or breeding exotic fish
or renting out those inflatable jumping-castles?
What if
he's tired of all those books in Technicolor
all the paparazzi out to get him
and commercialize his favorite beanie
just because he's on vacation because he pulled some strings at the office
thus catapulting him into some movie set halfway across the world?
What if he's sick and tired of them hunting down his girlfriend
his dog
that random wizard mentor guy that's a deadringer for Dumbledore?
What if he would rather sit at home and watch the Game Show Network
and change his name to something boring like John instead of living up to a thinker's expectations?
Or maybe just the opposite, he's just watching Family Feud to pass the time because he WANTS to be a thinker
but doesn't know how?
Or maybe Family Feud just makes him lonely because he doesn't have a real family,
just that evil guy with funny glasses and ****** hair and an awful Hamburglar taste in clothes?
What if he's decided he's on the wrong path
and needs to turn his life around?
What if Waldo doesn't want to be found?
Dec 22, 2009
Dec 22, 2009 at 6:05 PM UTC
A written word is the choicest of relics,
It is something at once more intimate with us,
And more universal than any other work of art,
Just as books are the treasured wealth of the world,
I wanted to live deliberately,
So I went to the woods,
And I found it wholesome to be alone there,
For we need the tonic of wildness,
A single gentle rain,
Makes the grass many shades greener,
So our prospects brighten,
On the influx of better thoughts,
We should be blessed if we lived in the present always,
And took advantage of every accident that befell us.
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 8:59 PM UTC
A misplaced Oxford Comma
Lead to perilous trauma
She drifted into an Oggsford Coma
Then turned into an awful aroma
The Ceremony held in 1980
Resurrected in 1 A.D
In the lumbering town of Hudson's Bay
Majorie chose to stay
Never feeling so free
She sat within a tree
Enjoying all she could see
The girl decided never to flee
Established in 1995
This dream came Alive
A tree home called heaven
Would stand until 1997
Slim used to be a Jackline Skinner
Lumberjack was more of a winner
Quickly forgot all about Walden Pond
Long before a new light dawned
"The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows"
Even goes for pros
Or vacant minded 'hoes'
Just patiently listen to those
Who know where a **** goes
Don't make needless foes
Leave that for all the 'pros'
Slim stood uttering horrible slurs
At the request of a woman in expensive furs
Majorie stood on bended knee
Pleading for them to leave her tree
As she reached the bottom of the ladder
Silence was breached by a sudden clatter
All the rats began to scatter
Knowing exactly what was the matter
The lumberjack had missed his mark
Added slightly too much ark
Caused the Oak to prematurely tumble
And his body to instantly crumble
May 25, 2013
May 25, 2013 at 3:08 AM UTC
He was not your average hermit,
he was not unkempt or *****
He camped out in the woods of Maine
for years, now, nearly thirty.
He burgled food and propane tanks
when folks were not at home.
His carbon footprint was quite small
He didn’t even have a phone.
With a high school education,
He liked living off the land
He oft” shopped” at a summer camp
but was caught on security cam.
Finally they captured him
and put him in a cell.
Now with murderers and rapists
The hermit’s forced to dwell.
His distinctive “Woodsy” odor
Keeps them at bay, I swear.
This fugitive from Walden Pond is
smarter than the average bear.
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 8:47 AM UTC
If I decided to peal paint off the upside-down radiator
for eternity,
I wonder if you would sit beside me
reading Wallace Stevens.
If I decided to nurse the convent garden bursts of peonies
for eternity,
I wonder if you would smuggle me some
David Bowie tracks.
If I decided to eat only fudge brownies and cherry Starbursts
for eternity,
I wonder if you would google gourmet
recipes for me.
If I decided to paint my own Walden in the Washington wild
for eternity,
I wonder if you would build a nightclub
next to my cabin.
If I decided to leap out airplane hatches and steal rodeo saddles and read my poetry out-loud
for eternity,
I wonder if you would be happily
married in Norway.
Jun 24, 2012
Jun 24, 2012 at 6:52 PM UTC
~
"memory runs back farther than mythology."
two years,
two months,
and two days,
in a cabin they built
near Walden Pond.
on a mission of gravity,
the heavens forming a spotlight
on centrifugal force,
abroad the hollow mind,
chronically untethered.
"I went to the woods to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms..."
this ship's captain was an architect,
but her starblazing failed
to break ground,
so this life is now a structure settled upon sand,
and way out yonder,
where there is
no blade of grass,
just weeds growing out from under the floor.
but her daughters are
grinning magnets,
passionate machines.
"copy that?...," asks Houston.
she takes a long, hard swallow,
the shadow of a bell
inspiring the astronaut in her
to shoot for incapable stars,
but the bell she hears now
is that of an alarm clock
telling her it's time to wake up:
shoulders straight.
hands free.
arms strong.
fingers stiff.
chronically untethered.
she's not looking for new days,
she is a new day,
compacted out of water,
tired of changing real estate
and showering with
other people's success.
those loud kids, her kids, play
down the hall, in the beehive.
radio jargon's on full blast too
and telling her where
to buy and sell today's instant pleasure.
she's busy now with self-stimulation,
Betty Dodson Method,
then mixing orange powder
with 100 year old whiskey
kept in the lunar module:
it's a spacewalk to eternity, faster-than-light:
she sees broken pool tables
and backyard swings.
she sees 'ordinary'
checked off on the calendar.
she sees 'happiness'
hiding in an old photo of Murphy's Camp.
she wakes to
her husband, Houston,
in a holding pattern,
she feels him moving, whispering,
and touching something
far off inside of her,
but not moored
in a specific time or place.
in search of where
she now exists
(if she even existed at all),
her memories feel artificial
in that she lacks
the emotional attachment
that comes with
actually having lived them.
there are no answers, no choices.
only reactions.
it is always going to be
that broken state of things:
these days of heaven,
chronically untethered.
"only that day dawns to which I'm awake. there is more day to dawn, I suppose. and like us, the sun is but a morning star upon being dreamed into existence..."
~
Jul 25, 2022
Jul 25, 2022 at 9:19 PM UTC
- Joseph Childress
Absence makes the heart grow
Fonder for most
Somber for some
Odd of others
The presence of love
Is the foremost force
In the divorce
Of reason
Attachments
Magnets
Victims of attraction
Repel
Then make tractions
That keep the world
Moving
Rebels revel
In revolution
Worshipping
The great changing
Like crescent moons
Before the new
Each phase
Relays the latest trend
As love, hate and sin
Blends in a cocktail
Of delusion
Drunkards play martyr
In the extremist
Conditions
Relentless systems of belief
That leaves relief
For the reliving of death
The children witness it all
Imitating
And coming up shorter
Than expectations
With each generation
Alternating ideas
For alternatives
Altering native ways of thinking
Beings battle for correction
In facilities
As others rights
Squander
In the quelling of dissent
Fighting fear
Is dear
To the hearts of trendsetters
Setting the standard
For the new age
New way of thinking
Off to Walden’s Lake
For the Great Disappearance
Dissing appearance
For the sake of absence
As absentmindedness
Watches from afar
Don’t worry
I’ll return with enough
Civil disobedience
The laws will have to change
In our honor
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 6:05 PM UTC
A tortoise ripe with lime stone wrinkles
Shakes off the final layers of that sediment
Crystal that had calcified itself to the classic side
Of the shelf.
Like a filthy barnacle that clings to the inside
Of my skull
& whispers phrases of Walden to the black one
Of my mind.
He threw that spider silk
& iron twine around a lion's
Spine as a sign of respect:
Then he yanked as a means to dissect
When it was least expected.
I was the envy & death smudged black
The ***** duffle bags under a skeletons
Hollow hole.
I hate you with every fiber.
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 1:13 AM UTC
You...
To me...
Are the essence,
of the earth mother...
As you watch over your pond,
with an easy, laidback, grace..
and help us see it grow and
chart it's every, every season.
Turtles, weeds and all...
I adore the fact, that you,
write love with an earthy lust
And you lust with an earthy abandon....
You have an intelligence,
That always expands my mind
All the way over there
on the other upside...
You and I share old friends
Writers of art,
livers of life.
those who mark....
and make the small moments large
Yet, I know you not...
but fervently wish
We could sit and pass time
Over tea or coffee..
You are one of many....
Who write voraciously
With life and passion in your pen
But so too,
You are one of the few
Who I go to read ....again and again.
So I thank you...
My very own female
Walden...
For the lessons
of the earth, life, loving
and humbly implore you
write again and again..
Til the world stops turning...
Then....just write it's begining again...
Nov 17, 2014
Nov 17, 2014 at 12:32 AM UTC
He favored this poem
but never explained
the one named Smoke
by Henry David Thoreau
remembered Walden fame
Was the poem a mirror
reflecting a life
in fullness lived?
a pilot as Icarius
youthful ascents of flight
Were his pinions melted
in one upward climb?
Then a sharp descent
may have in the mirror appeared
discovering atomic paths
searching for particles
in their hidden depths
An Icarian bird once more
in a new pursuit?
Facing dangers in
desert flashes
like Icarius moving
much too close to
elemental light?
Or else
smoke thins and thickens
No more circling above
leaving his nest now
pursuing literary truth
where darkness also
has its due
Shading light from sun
and stars
Enabling students to
see anew
Imaginations soaring to
heights and depths
But he remembers still
a life complete and whole
Does he find any need
for pardon for this
his own clear flame?
I'll end this verse with
a sound some would
call a chime
This because 'til now
just one line did rhyme!
Apr 25, 2012
Apr 25, 2012 at 11:45 AM UTC
I lap from puddles,
tasting of blistered bark,
teeth green from the moss
deer abandoned.
Fed the fire with Walden,
Its spine snapped
like a rabbit’s neck.
Ash branded my palms
with unread philosophy.
Soon it will be winter.
I’ll freeze stiff: a fallen carcass.
Unless poems hatch inside me,
larvae splitting bone from within.
Sep 14, 2025
Sep 14, 2025 at 6:42 PM UTC
THIS is where Thoreau sat
after he awoke from a night of dreaming,
His smart phone screaming in his ear-
WAKE UP! WAKE UP!
He sat right here after putting on his neoprene boots,
Poring his hot cup of coffee and allowing the dog to do its duty.
He sat right here after listening to the news,
gathering bits of worry and panic-
Thank God he didn't like to work
Or he might be late in traffic.
He sat right here
reading on his half charged nook
hoping that the batteries didn't run out
before he had a chance to get to the good part,
Realizing the irony of electronic books is that even they,
Are putting you on a time limit.
This very spot is where he stood,
Wearing his tee shirt with a large moustache printed across the front,
Replaying songs from his iPOD
"Call me maybe..."
I'm sure the beauty of Walden captured him,
so in effort to share he'd snap pictures for Instagram and hope that enough people "liked" it to send his photo viral, like the howl of the midnight owl who hangs out in his yard.
This is where he sat
after taking his ****** and securing his door from his neighbor
This is where he sat
when he returned home
from a job he didn't even want
This is where he sat
soaking up the heat flashes and solar flares
Watching comets pass by like a common sight
I'm sure that this,
Is where he'd sit-
And this,
Would be his reason to go to the woods.
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 9:28 AM UTC
We need the tonic of wilderness
the land and sea. Indefinitely wild.
Unsurveyed and unfathomed.
A taste of beautiful cultivated outdoors
I wanted to live deep
and **** the marrow out of life
but we loiter in the winter
while it is already spring
The surface of the Earth
soft and impressable
carving deep
ruts of tradition and conformity
I’d rather go before the mast
on deck of the world.
Mysterious and explorable
amid the moonlight and mountains.
Jan 23, 2015
Jan 23, 2015 at 4:41 PM UTC
SOMETIMES A MORTAL FEELS IN HIMSELF NATURE
--NOT HIS FATHER BUT HIS MOTHER STIRS
WITHIN HIM, AND HE BECOMES INMORTAL WITH HER
INMORTALITY. FROM TIME TO TIME SHE CLAIMS
KINDREDSHIP WWITH US, AND SOME GLOBULE
FROM HER VEINS STEALS UP INTO OUR OWN.
I AM THE AUTUMNAL SUN,
WITH AUTUMN GALES MY RACE IS RUN
WHEN WILL THE HAZEL PUT FORTH ITS FLOERS,
OR THE GRAPE RIPEN UNDER MY BOWERS¿
WHEN WILL THE HARVEST OR THE HUNTER'S MOON
TURN MI MIDNIGTH INTO MID-NOON
I AM ALL SEERE AND YELLOW,
AND TO MY CORE MELLOW.
THE MAST IS DROPPING WITHIN M WOODS,
THE WINTER IS LURKING WITHIN MY MOODS,
AND THE RUSTLING OFN THE WITHERED LEAF
IS THE CONSTANT MUSIC OF MI GRIEF....
HENRY DAVID THOUREAU AN AMERICAN TITAN VERY UNKNOWN AND MY FAVORITE YANKEE POET. SO GOOD, AS SHELLEY. THIS SHOULD BE HERE. HENRY DAVID THOUREAU THE GREAT AMERICAN ORIGINAL, CIVYL DESOBEDIANCE IS SO ******* GOOD WALDEN TOO, BUT HIS POEMS ARE BEAUTIFUL AND MELLOW.
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 1:27 AM UTC
Two paths diverged in the woods,
and we bulldozed them into a
highway, didn't we comrades?
That is called progress.
Now the commute to work
is manageable, like our
limited resources.
Nov 20, 2013
Nov 20, 2013 at 2:22 PM UTC
tell me where you go remember
my eyes as you do
make everyday better in words
call me sometimes
we grew together
that day I liked your poem
that sounded like Whitman reincarnated
the pond like Walden might peruse
you wrote about the reeds
fishes
the eastern side of the pond
and it touched me
like fire in a kiln
I got hardened
more shiny
more aware of life
and love and sacrifices
you have brought me here
to that pond the edge
I look down and now see
all that you have described more beautifully
a thousand miles letters seem to bring us closer together
than ever
and not anything
can ever
make me stop dreaming
Mar 5, 2017
Mar 5, 2017 at 10:38 PM UTC
Got away from it all, living on the island
Vagrants raft away from me
No technology, I may be a savage but this be my land
society of one, me and endless sea
your petty worries are just grains in the sand
There's no time of day, living on the island
Only day and night, when there's a will there's a way
No cruelty, no tickets, no beatings, no contraband
Living on the island, you're alone, not lonely, you're only a stray
Here my starvation isn't at the hands of others
the beasts still exists, but they're my friends
my Walden Lake, no kin, no brothers
but I was alone in the beginning, I'll be alone in the end
I can build what I need, do whatever what I want
I'll smell, but you can't spit on me, I'm the king of myself
Mar 26, 2012
Mar 26, 2012 at 4:19 PM UTC
Waking is like that final breath before the plunge
Down deeper into the thick of possibility
Where I find the Nietzchian mastery
That mentality that dominates and conquers
Leaving behind the pitiful
Weaker modes of being
That sharp edge of nihilism that propagates
The negation of substantial purpose
And living becomes a series of tasks that are manageable
Not the overbearing jumbled cluster **** of modern man
How I dream of Walden
That escape to find existential meaning
That reverts me back to an independent self that relies on not man but nature
To derive sustenance
Long for that shack
In the middle of no where where the worry of the day is to feed myself
And to stare at the stars
Instead of work long hours and still have no freedom to see
But it is not probable that I will have an escape
For the planet is dying one tree at a time
And the ignorance of our species is making
My exodus a place worse than the suburb
At least there I don't witness the choking of innocent creatures on pollution
Gasping for air through lungs riddled with fume
And foaming on plastic by product
While I contribute no animosity towards my mother I participate by association
And feed the monster it's favorite treat
That sickly green paper
And a snack of penny meat
While my exceedingly more mechanical mind cranks the cogs tighter
And starts to rhyme
Filling in the line space and paying my dues I become another body
Thus a weapon to the corporate move
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 2:37 PM UTC
Dear Ed.
You'll have to forgive me if I
stop favoriting most of your work. It's all spectacular,
and if good poems were gravy,
I'd need more bread.
And a bucket.
But you see,
33 years ago, despite my uncontainable appreciation
for the many high school graduation checks,
I broke me sense of gratitude
while handwriting out scores of "thank you notes.”
Now, I’m unable to offer even the slightest compliment
with these ungrateful fingers.
So forgive me, if I'm hard-pressed
to as much as click a “heart”
or a “thumbs up” button;
for even one more of your upgrades to the Holy Grail.
And don’t bother clicking my stuff. There are no more
thank-you fish in Walden pond;
I’m ingrate enough for the both of us.
Just know
as my mouse goes quiet, your **** is **** good.
**** good.
"And that goes for the rest of you
poems."
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 6:37 PM UTC
I hope you find your Walden.
I hope it helps you discover
those things about you
that I do love.
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 12:59 AM UTC
So much hope set in the height of 8"
The curlewing curls of
pea plants
decadent
Continuos flowing of the firmament
Breaking the concrete walk of the beat to the scene we live our lives between street meat
Imploding our boundaries while humans surround me no air or oxygen just fountains trying too hard to be scenic
I have a garden
I own the earth
But not In the end
It will be my dad
All carbon and cozy covered in primrose plots moldy and pozy'd
So many flowers mounded on the grave of a detritus that it worthy.
To be part of physics
Oh happy squeaking willow branches I remember
Oh china tree blossoms white
-just soon to come out-
Ou the bombs though
The agony hanging over me when I know that there is not a peace treaty from betwixt man fingers plotting graphs of how to not hurt each other
Yet I swoon to the garden and it befuddles my every move tripping me with plant with organism with hippy mumbojumbo
Convoluted material
That makes an aqueous pressure and fluidity to drown all the youth
Thou must grow but this isn't this fixed rates word attack
No. I am here to be the garden
To show walden in myself for my selfs joy
I am here for selfishness
Not evil as you couldn't see me
To pick apart the pieces
If the leaves rent in the movement to just create me
To tease and toss the strings ran from below them to the trees seams.
To root the ever awesome conglomerated picture of a fixture of an ornament
Of the human life that Seams to stem from what is Lendon.
This is homage to myself
And so is the thought.
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 8:27 PM UTC
The wind still blows thru
The old Walden Wheel
Where we sat under that
Hole in the sky
And talked of flying
Far away and becoming
People.
The hinges still creak
Where the stars listened to our strictures
On love, life, and magic.
They would dance if we let them.
Speak even, when we could suffocate
those voices that insisted,
“Back straight,
banish your heart,
Balance it ALL."
Would you believe me
If I told you that
The wheel turns ‘round
still?
Would it disturb you to know
That it screams on without a
Master even now,
As you lay your children to bed?
As you lay your dreams to bed?
As you follow your lover to bed,
And dream of diving headlong off that
lonesome eye
into
the
black
Un-
known?
~
I was told the engine man
had been swallowed by the machine
Many years ago
The wind still blows through
That wretched wheel of ours.
Still ticking, whirring, counting,
Well after we are gone,
Well after the metals are scrapped
for timepieces and children's toys.
Oct 18, 2012
Oct 18, 2012 at 2:38 PM UTC
Sometimes in the summer,
I walk down to the empty part of
my neighborhood at dawn.
there, vacant lots stretch their dry-grass-legs
and recline on the hillsides, napping.
they, the part of the American dream
that you always forget about when you finally wake up,
are the unwanted kin of proud homes.
by a storm drainage lake, brown with algae,
I take a seat on a rusted guardrail
and as I look across the water, hypoxic and still
for a moment transforming into fool's
gold before my eyes, as if Midas has crested the horizon,
I feel the gaze of my transcendental father,
and wonder why I'm able to feel at peace.
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 8:54 PM UTC