"warbled" poems
1235
Like Rain it sounded till it curved
And then I new ’twas Wind—
It walked as wet as any Wave
But swept as dry as sand—
When it had pushed itself away
To some remotest Plain
A coming as of Hosts was heard
It filled the Wells, it pleased the Pools
It warbled in the Road—
It pulled the spigot from the Hills
And let the Floods abroad—
It loosened acres, lifted seas
The sites of Centres stirred
Then like Elijah rode away
Upon a Wheel of Cloud.
16.1k
Somewhere
Somehow
I can’t identify when
it changed.
I saw things differently,
my eyes no longer covered
by an opaque way
of thinking.
Sunshine brightened this world
with unimagined colors,
butterflies broke free,
songbirds warbled lovely tunes.
Amidst emerging beauty
words became
every day’s lifeblood;
I found my voice.
All around me,
there was change,
yet everything remained
the same.
For it was me
that changed.
Reborn, rewired.
My heart drummed
a brand new beat.
Driven by transformation,
I wrote. I write.
Adding a dash of color.
Singing harmony
to surrounding melodies.
I am changing.
I am writing.
I am a poet.
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 5:47 PM UTC
A shaft from the golden sun,
reclined peacefully in my lap.
The amber gleam reflected back,
and gently baked the solemn land.
An ardent whisper furnished the woods
with a viridescent scent that woke up the woods.
Silver songs of sleek streams,
chased the lullabies away;
gently.
Ancient tress cuddled the wind,
their leaves clapped in sheer bliss
The broken winged white eyed bulbul,
warbled hymns to lift the curse.
Scarlet tainted vintage letters resting in the rustic mailbox,
await your tender touch; while they chant for a past long gone.
But lily livered clouds,
they have turned your courage into a yellow illusion.
So now defy the toxic words and the errors you made,
A different person inside your skin, long ago, burned our hearts on the hateful flames.
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 6:44 PM UTC
(To L. L.)
Could we dig up this long-buried treasure,
Were it worth the pleasure,
We never could learn love’s song,
We are parted too long.
Could the passionate past that is fled
Call back its dead,
Could we live it all over again,
Were it worth the pain!
I remember we used to meet
By an ivied seat,
And you warbled each pretty word
With the air of a bird;
And your voice had a quaver in it,
Just like a linnet,
And shook, as the blackbird’s throat
With its last big note;
And your eyes, they were green and grey
Like an April day,
But lit into amethyst
When I stooped and kissed;
And your mouth, it would never smile
For a long, long while,
Then it rippled all over with laughter
Five minutes after.
You were always afraid of a shower,
Just like a flower:
I remember you started and ran
When the rain began.
I remember I never could catch you,
For no one could match you,
You had wonderful, luminous, fleet,
Little wings to your feet.
I remember your hair—did I tie it?
For it always ran riot—
Like a tangled sunbeam of gold:
These things are old.
I remember so well the room,
And the lilac bloom
That beat at the dripping pane
In the warm June rain;
And the colour of your gown,
It was amber-brown,
And two yellow satin bows
From your shoulders rose.
And the handkerchief of French lace
Which you held to your face—
Had a small tear left a stain?
Or was it the rain?
On your hand as it waved adieu
There were veins of blue;
In your voice as it said good-bye
Was a petulant cry,
‘You have only wasted your life.’
(Ah, that was the knife!)
When I rushed through the garden gate
It was all too late.
Could we live it over again,
Were it worth the pain,
Could the passionate past that is fled
Call back its dead!
Well, if my heart must break,
Dear love, for your sake,
It will break in music, I know,
Poets’ hearts break so.
But strange that I was not told
That the brain can hold
In a tiny ivory cell
God’s heaven and hell.
4.4k
When spring, to woods and wastes around,
Brought bloom and joy again,
The murdered traveller's bones were found,
Far down a narrow glen.
The fragrant birch, above him, hung
Her tassels in the sky;
And many a vernal blossom sprung,
And nodded careless by.
The red-bird warbled, as he wrought
His hanging nest o'erhead,
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.
But there was weeping far away,
And gentle eyes, for him,
With watching many an anxious day,
Were sorrowful and dim.
They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o'er the desert snow,
Unarmed, and hard beset;--
Nor how, when round the frosty pole
The northern dawn was red,
The mountain wolf and wild-cat stole
To banquet on the dead;--
Nor how, when strangers found his bones,
They dressed the hasty bier,
And marked his grave with nameless stones,
Unmoistened by a tear.
But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home;
And dreamed, and started as they slept,
For joy that he was come.
Long, long they looked--but never spied
His welcome step again,
Nor knew the fearful death he died
Far down that narrow glen.
3.4k
his essence
cascades across
the grain of my frame;
as his eyes dilate,
imbibing in the beauty
of motion teasing the lull
of moonbeams as it
dabbles
against the infinity
of our minds
beholding
our reflected image
in mirrored composure,
as our delicacy of want
pushes
towards an edge
of lustiness
entwined within
warbled notes
of rock wrens
singing love songs
as they dip
their wings
on early
summer
morn's
my eyes close
as softness of
lips touch upon
mine own; sending
thoughts to lucid
stillness of serendipity
bathing our contoured
frames in dulcetness
aligned within pouted
hunger tasting one
another in unity
kaleidoscopic prisms
alight in our eyes
as the lull of the moon
pulls the ebb and flow
of the ocean's current
as our bodies move
in rhythm with its
motion of each
cresting wave
crashing against
the shores of
our soul's fluidity
burbling in ecstasy
Jun 13, 2012
Jun 13, 2012 at 11:57 PM UTC
I am a warped vinyl left in the sun
by your careless hand.
My voice has become so warbled
it's no wonder you can't hear
all of the times I screamed "I miss you"
into that tin can microphone
so many songs ago.
The surface noise has grown louder
than the instruments
and now I know why
you never dust me off
the shelf and play me anymore.
Sep 4, 2014
Sep 4, 2014 at 10:19 PM UTC
Love seeketh not Itself to please.
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease.
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.
So sung a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet;
But a Pebble of the brook.
Warbled out these metres meet.
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight;
Joys in anothers loss of ease.
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.
2.8k
1 I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,
2 Borne, like a vapor, on the summer air;
3 I see her tripping where the bright streams play,
4 Happy as the daisies that dance on her way.
5 Many were the wild notes her merry voice would pour.
6 Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o'er:
7 Oh! I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,
8 Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.
9 I long for Jeanie with the daydawn smile,
10 Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile;
11 I hear her melodies, like joys gone by,
12 Sighing round my heart o'er the fond hopes that die: --
13 Sighing like the night wind and sobbing like the rain, --
14 Wailing for the lost one that comes not again:
15 Oh! I long for Jeanie, and my heart bows low,
16 Never more to find her where the bright waters flow.
17 I sigh for Jeanie, but her light form strayed
18 Far from the fond hearts round her native glade;
19 Her smiles have vanished and her sweet songs flown,
20 Flitting like the dreams that have cheered us and gone.
21 Now the nodding wild flowers may wither on the shore
22 While her gentle fingers will cull them no more:
23 Oh! I sigh for Jeanie with the light brown hair,
24 Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.
2.7k
When the warm sun, that brings
Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,
’Tis sweet to visit the still wood, where springs
The first flower of the plain.
I love the season well,
When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,
Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell
The coming-on of storms.
From the earth’s loosened mould
The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;
Though stricken to the heart with winter’s cold,
The drooping tree revives.
The softly-warbled song
Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings
Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along
The forest openings.
When the bright sunset fills
The silver woods with light, the green slope throws
Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,
And wide the upland glows.
And when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o’er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out, and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.
Inverted in the tide,
Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw,
And the fair trees look over, side by side,
And see themselves below.
Sweet April!—many a thought
Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;
Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,
Life’s golden fruit is shed.
2.5k
"The past is a bucket of ashes."
1
THE WOMAN named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
and fastens at last the last braid and coil
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.
2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.
The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.
3
It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.
And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened
... and the only listeners left now
... are ... the rats ... and the lizards.
And there are black crows
crying, "Caw, caw,"
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.
The only singers now are crows crying, "Caw, caw,"
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are ... the rats ... and the lizards.
4
The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.
And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.
2.4k
I
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, "You'll all be drowned!"
They called aloud, "Our Sieve ain't big,
But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig!
In a Sieve we'll go to sea!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
II
They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
"O won't they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it's extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
III
The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, "How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
IV
And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
"O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
V
They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry ****
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
VI
And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, "How tall they've grown!
For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore!"
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, "If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,?
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!"
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
1.8k
Sticky honey,
sickly sweet
Heaven's homemade remedy
black bear, left paw
suckling
queen bee, mossy
tall oak tree
Salmon swim up stream
warbled forehead
jagged teeth
grizzly bear , sharp claw
nature is an
animal
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 9:24 PM UTC
Where are
The ecstatic saxophones that
Slung forth swank slurs of
Beauty,
The *** *** ***
Bass lines,
The snaps and snares and the
Sweet rhythm of the Night?
Music had character
And minds followed, in following
Soared.
There were no glittery vampires,
No prepubescent
Brother boy bands.
Soulful crooners never
Warbled over Alejandro,
Or the boots with the fur, with the fur.
We wrote letters and shared thoughts and ideas
And convictions.
There was no need for the techno
Middleman
To wrap our
Real thoughts in LOLs
To make opening
Up to another
More efficient.
Mass media
Gluttony drowns
America till I strain and struggle
Only to barely stay afloat
In this sea of apathy.
But you won't buy and sell my soul.
I'm not going to
Be your
Consumptive,
Quiet,
Couldn't-care-less,
I won't get in the way,
And I won't raise my voice,
Good American,
2.5 children,
Christian,
Conserva-libera-publi-crat,
Self-centered, Illiterate, Ignorant
Sheep
Only to follow the power.
**** no,
I'm mad as hell;
I want to leave the next generation
A world where
You can confess your
Love and be a man or
Love another man and have
Basic human rights, and it all
Starts in your
Mind
And your
Expression thereof.
It's the saccharine pop
Culture that has
Made free-thought unfashionable, a crime.
Art is
Revolution.
Hang
Up,
Log
Out,
Unplug and just look
At what you've let the
World become in
Letting yourself be
Little more than
A faceless source
Of merciless dollars.
Wrest free our
Culture from the
Calamitous and indifferent
Claws of rampant capitalism.
Express yourself or submit,
Stand up for a free America.
I will not be sold.
Oct 26, 2010
Oct 26, 2010 at 2:23 PM UTC
Lucifer just said I'm two-faced;
But the reality is I wear many faces
Each one a mask
Picking a bouquet of oopsie-daises
Unabashedly lashing out at you
I eviscerate; wielding a scalpel
Then I pounce; scalped him,
Pelt dangling from my ***** pack
**Went Kerouac on ***** ***
Surprise, surprise
Palpable attack
Thumbing tacks into your eyes
Lame as a bad sitcom
Band-wagon careening off the laugh-track
Everybody loves disarray
**** Vamoose!
Underlying interloper
Feel the allusion in high resolution;
Little tike on the *****
Anne frankly I'm that Führer fomenting furor
Have you lost your marbles?
Inaudibly garbling warbled garbage
Mauled to death
**I **** narwhals**
Convoluted revolution
I revel in it
Elusive illusion
Testify, I bring the excellence in electrocution
I'm the executioner
Putting the fun in funeral
Like a neurotic necrotizing narcotic
A lobotomy to the temporal
I dreamt the demented torment of descent
Cascading like a torrential waterfall
Ghoulish delight
Primeval upheavaler
With hopes to elope, many fold
Mic bold, but I suspect she's hitting the slopes;
Ice cold
Evoking emotion but a hopeless show
marionette in a stranglehold
Mar 1, 2014
Mar 1, 2014 at 9:01 AM UTC
You changed your clothes
right there in front of me.
The dust no longer clinging to your skin
like little specks of angel dust
Smiles fading into harsh words and tears
whether there's an audience or not.
A love stained like the sleeves of my shirt,
mascara-streaked and frayed along the seams.
I still can't handle real life.
Those inbetween moments where you're in his bed.
Where you're writing love letters on Valentine's Day
even though you hate it.
Your broken boy is still in pieces at the bottom
of your toy chest. Voice warbled from dead batteries.
Feb 18, 2013
Feb 18, 2013 at 8:50 AM UTC
i read your poems, but i can't read you.
what's the point?
other boys, they call me pretty-
well,
sometimes they do.
but still,
other boys, they touch my hand,
they like my hair,
they think i'm funny.
but they're not you,
and that rips me up.
the boy who once said i'm not his type
doesn't think
you are good
for me.
but
he doesn't know you.
he doesn't know
your pretty
folded
inside out
folded
right side out,
folded
into the pit
of my stomach, giving me butterflies.
oh, my god, i think this is what love feels like
when you’re stuck on the rewind
of a cassette tape,
because the player
doesn’t auto-stop,
and you don't feel like getting up,
so the tape snaps or tangles or knots.
either way it can’t be the same ******* song,
it sounds too different to be.
warbled.
but the beat is the same.
it starts off slow then speeds up
as the eyes get bluer
and her cheeks get warmer.
tha. thump. tha. thump.
tha thump. tha thump.
thathumpthathumpthathump.
if you love me, baby, just say so.
because i’m so brand new,
i’m so full of darkness.
you’re so ruggedly smooth,
so full of lightning.
i’m so brand new,
that i can’t read you like your poems.
i’m so full of darkness,
that i can’t feel loved anymore.
but, baby, baby, bubby.
i could love you like a poem.
i’ll be the body electric.
(i love as hard as a whitman)
i’ll be the master, the dream, the fool.
(i love as illogically as a kipling)
i’ll be immortal.
(i’ll love as sweetly as a dickinson)
i’ll be everything
you’ve ever read about and wanted,
if you’d just come clean.
so if you love me
if you love me
come clean.
Nov 30, 2016
Nov 30, 2016 at 9:42 PM UTC
WHILST I beheld the neck o’ th’ dove,
I spied and read these words.
‘This pretty dye
Which takes your eye,
Is not at all the bird’s. 5
The dusky raven might
Have with these colours pleased your sight,
Had God but chose so to ordain above;’
This label wore the dove.
Whilst I admired the nightingale, 10
These notes she warbled o’er.
‘No melody
Indeed have I,
Admire me then no more:
God has it in His choice 15
To give the owl, or me, this voice;
’Tis He, ’tis He that makes me tell my tale;’
This sang the nightingale.
I smelt and praised the fragrant rose,
Blushing, thus answer’d she. 20
‘The praise you gave,
The scent I have,
Do not belong to me;
This harmless odour, none
But only God indeed does own; 25
To be His keepers, my poor leaves He chose;’
And thus replied the rose.
I took the honey from the bee,
On th’ bag these words were seen.
‘More sweet than this 30
Perchance nought is,
Yet gall it might have been:
If God it should so please,
He could still make it such with ease;
And as well gall to honey change can He;’ 35
This learnt I of the bee.
I touch’d and liked the down o’ th’ swan;
But felt these words there writ.
‘Bristles, thorns, here
I soon should bear, 40
Did God ordain but it;
If my down to thy touch
Seem soft and smooth, God made it such;
Give more, or take all this away, He can;’
This was I taught by th’ swan. 45
All creatures, then, confess to God
That th’ owe Him all, but I.
My senses find
True, that my mind
Would still, oft does, deny. 50
Hence, Pride! out of my soul!
O’er it thou shalt no more control;
I’ll learn this lesson, and escape the rod:
I, too, have all from God.
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 8:04 PM UTC
In line for the new roller coaster
was a group of ex-protestors
in cobbled monogamous flocks.
They squawked and squawked.
She warbled.
He wooed.
She swayed.
He swooned.
And she only had sunscreened her front.
Her back must've stung.
Bright red.
But I bet she reserves her best stories
for unreserved reservations in bed.
Feb 22, 2018
Feb 22, 2018 at 1:22 PM UTC
*the man of light
knows darkness all to well
he possess sacred knowledge
of source
a living experience with in
radiant
and self effulgent
he knows all is permitted
in the acculturated labyrinths of mind
rooted in bias
and incalculable distortions
a hell house ride
constructed of warbled mirrors
Leprechauns gold
an abusement park
of crepuscular
subconscious ethers
and concertized form
on shape shifting sands
creativity gone mad
where time undoes all
its weary inhabitants worn
they are the color of sleep
attaining misguidance
oh the vacuous business
of guided meditations
through azure skies and verdant fields
while the certified uninitiated
whisper
their pale voices against sonorous winds
as if they could lever boulders with broken twigs
stone churches
gothic crosses
temples of man
monoliths to the imaginary
fantastical man god
re-pleat with beard and cock....how quaint
adulations and prostrations
to there man made deity
through myth that binds
group think
other directed
un-individuated individuals
like tribal ants
a world of shattered light
a white knuckle ride
on a spinning mud ball
yet who knows the secret
of the inner light
the illuminated door
the portal through which
Scottie will really beam you up
The man of the mystic light
in a darkened freakish world
is he not an inconvenience
like a mentor to the deaf dumb and blind
he is rarely recognized
almost never believed
the light is not a metaphor
the source that emanates all
although formless and self effulgent
it is not a religion yet all abide with in it
in the dark funnel of conceit
man turns everything into a noun
as if naming is claiming
when what he seeks is beyond
for it is a great dimension of another order
konx om pax
light in extension*
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 1:08 PM UTC
near the whitewashed wall
a splash of geraniums
blazed a rich blood red
in the golden glance
of daylights final dazzle
i stopped and i enjoyed it
a house finch warbled nearby
shadows deepened all around
and drowned the final glow
gold to blue then starry night
filled with the songs of crickets
and my thoughts of you
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 3:07 AM UTC
*for my pastor, for my father, and for a friend.
6.
i find your name carved quiet by the windowsill
in an empty room.
5.
i find half your coat hanging wayside where once his coat was, too.
4.
father told me you too keep your dentures in a cup like grandfather’s.
3.
that you were there as he packed his bags and warbled off
for the hospital. you didn’t talk to him then
but still we knew. or so he did:
he caught you smiling by the desks where he worked.
2.
i find your photographs by the balcony,
and your footprints by the garden. bits of your
hair by the pavement next to candy wrappers and
pencil jars.
1.
together we pick up the pieces you left behind. and sew. and stitch
ourselves together. open our mouths in silence.
0.
we wait for your next visit.
Feb 2, 2016
Feb 2, 2016 at 8:11 AM UTC
That moment the cage
Robs the bird its chance to fly
Ambulance instinct
Feathered wing breathing
Warbled heart monitor song
Gold horizon pulse
Tangerine lover
Citrus at her lips, my lips
Passionate headlock
Tangles her fingers
At my neck with knotted sighs
Auburn cat's cradle
Aug 29, 2018
Aug 29, 2018 at 12:47 PM UTC
I used to stand, a little girl,
In the face of the mighty River,
And try my luck against the current,
Till my thin frame would shiver.
The River was a muscled god
Of milky Grecian marble,
Who'd swallow up the flotsam,
While the safer songbirds warbled.
My mother told me "stay away,
The River, he is hungry,
He'll twist you round and break your bones
And take your sweet self from me."
And, from then on, I'd heed her word,
And steer clear of the River,
Or throw in sticks to harm it,
Vainly, watch them be devoured.
And sometimes, when the rain came down
For long days at a time,
The River would rise from his bed,
To drown all that was mine.
So he got many over on me,
And I, nothing on him.
The River was so sly, you see,
The Devil, just too slim.
And then I grew up proud
And beautiful, and moved away,
To a moneyed place in the northern states,
Where the River stayed away.
But I met a man just like that Body
Rolling, roiling, wild,
That took and drowned all I did have
And left me with a child.
And my mother took me in again,
And told me just the same,
To shun the River, guard myself,
A man's worse than his name.
I took to daring, once again,
That arctic current down,
I'd dip my toes in evening time,
And smooth my forehead's frown.
I'd talk to him, my belly swole,
Confide in the River wild,
I prayed to God in the water's hearing,
That I did not need the child.
The River told me he would help,
That I could use his ways,
For he wanted only sacrifice,
And I wanted not the blame.
So I waded in, the hands of water
Cupped beneath my thighs,
And the River's water turned blood red,
And my eyes rolled to the sky.
Now I live alone again.
Playing mother was not my lot.
The River took my baby in,
Because my arms could not.
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 9:49 AM UTC