"welter" poems
rehearsing...
in the mind
he rehearses
a sequence of blows
lefts and rights
uppercuts
the jabbing low
whilst dancing and skipping
on spry feet
insides...
butterflies start to flutter
around in his insides
yet knowing the opponent
must not see any nerves
he's got to be
cool
and
assertive
the glove's punch
deliveries
being
a
bout
winner
dreaming...
it's fight night
at the Las Vegas
Grand Garden Arena
he'll slog it out
for the welter weight title
muscles
poised
his package
ready
to wear the crowning
belt buckle
Mar 24, 2017
Mar 24, 2017 at 5:48 PM UTC
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
I've never been startled to surprise
seeing a man riding a six-wheel bicycle on my side
gazing up his smile in full plain sight
so subtle like pinwheels on summer breeze.
Cheese! says the lens-man from southeast
a harmonious melody led me round and round
till horses jump out of the merry-go-round
so as teacups swirling with no succulent tea
but are found to be couples squirming in obscurity.
Surprised! that no one tend to flee
for nights fright of lustful fantasies
covered their state of subtle ease.
Oh Fun, Fun, Fun, when there seems to be no sun
and I felt heedless to ponder
the fact that I endlessly Run, Run, Run
in far out yonder
then oops! ouch!
I howled like thunder.
Deluded, how I fell on the ground
when music suddenly lost it sound
colors I've knew were out of bound
and haze of somnolence was all I found.
Where could I be?
Surprise!
He shrieked
Who could it be?
Unexpectedly he's someone I could not see!
yet only I can hear.
A nowhere man whom greeted with sigh
though I've never seen him in beacon's of light
for he always knows how to welter my sight
his eerie voice orchestrates the eventide
shocked me with so much surprise.
for his eyes lilt like fireflies.
He given me a euphony, took away the agony
and hid me somewhere I can't even grasp
how many he had taken away to his untrodden land
to turn me as one of them, his very own nowhere man.
May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 at 10:27 AM UTC
The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
From building and battered paving-stone.
The headlight scoffs at the mist,
And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
Against a pane I press my forehead
And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.
The headlight finds the way
And life is gone from the wet and the welter--
Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared.
Far-wandered waif of other days,
Huddles for sleep in a doorway,
Homeless.
2.3k
Under a stagnant sky,
Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,
The River, jaded and forlorn,
Welters and wanders wearily--wretchedly--on;
Yet in and out among the ribs
Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles
Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls,
Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories,
Lingers to babble to a broken tune
(Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!)
So melancholy a soliloquy
It sounds as it might tell
The secret of the unending grief-in-grain,
The terror of Time and Change and Death,
That wastes this floating, transitory world.
What of the incantation
That forced the huddled shapes on yonder shore
To take and wear the night
Like a material majesty?
That touched the shafts of wavering fire
About this miserable welter and wash--
(River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!)--
Into long, shining signals from the panes
Of an enchanted pleasure-house,
Where life and life might live life lost in life
For ever and evermore?
O Death! O Change! O Time!
Without you, O, the insuperable eyes
Of these poor Might-Have-Beens,
These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!
2.3k
Quick little pinprick
barely breaking the skin
small welter of blood
filling in fingerprints.
Once a past shared
fleeting moments among years
erased in lieu of bigger smiles,
more pleasant portraits.
Just a quick little *****
reminding me, despite a
decade of turning away
that once, I faced the flash too.
Jul 8, 2010
Jul 8, 2010 at 11:12 AM UTC
Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.
Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.
His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.
It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,
Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.
1.8k
I experience solitude
Because I act rude
The effect is compounding
The effect is dumbfounding
I'm stuck in a trend
That will never end
My rudeness they return
So my bridges I burn
My life takes a turn
For connection I yearn
All I feel are the spurs
I live a life sheltered
To avoid being peltered
By the wailing welter
My walls block hate
Which is great
But I also miss love
That travels above
My feet are growing weary from the emptiness I stand
And I can count all of my friends on half of my hand
The half with no fingers
That's a real stinger
Not hearing the ringer
I become a feces flinger
Instead of a beautiful singer
The silence is deafening
My mentality it's threatening
With pain that's resounding
Of the drain I'm rounding
And the lingering loneliness
When I am my only guest
My mind is put to the test
By a solitude that infests
Oct 30, 2017
Oct 30, 2017 at 3:10 PM UTC
Seeing you drops me
into a roiling hot-spring (extra-dimensionally speaking) where
the insides are known to welter—their opalescent phospholipids
doing the wave at lightspeeds. Faster. Creating
a ring of light. Now the sound of light. From inside, creating
Me. You
make me light.
Oh the way you came towards me in that vermillion cardigan!
The color was not as fierce as your eyes! But I saw, too,
their softness behind—their yolk. And with mine I asked
as you passed me by
what would happen if I broke the shimmering membrane?
Would your water leak to blossom
the spell-bound violet amaranths that sleep their promise
in Borges’ living garden?
Or would it spill thick in crimson?
The hot sweet density tasting
like a wound freshly opened.
The taste I’ve come to know
when women’s eyes have made me light.
Mar 29, 2012
Mar 29, 2012 at 12:32 AM UTC
twisted words turn into twisted people
as they run around trying to seem well
and when they're twisting themselves more and more;
and when they unwind, slowly and vapidly,
they all start to hit the floor.
the bottle slid down to the floor so long ago,
but you were the only one who were to ever know
the reason i'd twisted the truth so much into a lie;
the reason i'd twisted what you saw, languidly,
through your twisted eyes.
as we all fell out in our fallout shelters
our twisted lives all, in an instant, began to welter
to the corkscrew sound waves coming out now;
to the corkscrews and corks lying about, sadly,
because we were all gonna die here, someway, somehow.
Oct 4, 2012
Oct 4, 2012 at 4:14 AM UTC
It is cluttered inside,
and lonely, as you sit there,
with all your noise, all your baggage,
and all your incoherent pieces,
and at the end of the day,
it is a choice;
it is your fault,
and,
but,
you can change.
Scattered, broken thoughts,
festering over the years,
rooted in fears, washing over you like tidal waves:
“Are you even trying to be good?”
“You’re wasting everyone’s time.”
“You push others away because you are afraid.”
Your clenching, pounding heart responds,
“There is danger here, and you are not safe."
*No. There is no danger. I am safe.*
You are exhausted,
with the collateral damage
of harboring irrational thoughts,
and of having hurt so many people,
trying to protect yourself.
So you brazenly dive into the wreckage,
because you have had enough,
and trudge through your muddled self,
again
and again
and again.
You lurch and welter within your swamp,
and it reeks of self-pity
and blind-spots,
and now you are up to your chin
in quicksand, trapped in vat,
conjured
(with your permission)
by your own monstrous thoughts.
Get outside of yourself;
your mess, your swamp,
your polluted soul,
your trembling anxiety,
your maladaptive thinking,
your baggage,
your noise,
your clutter.
Your mind is overwhelming,
and,
but,
it is ever-malleable.
Nov 27, 2013
Nov 27, 2013 at 10:24 PM UTC
I moved to this town
fifty-four years ago
to live in a house that
was a two and a half
bedroom half a double
with two parents and
six siblings in a
welter of tumultuous
chaos and disarray.
Being the oldest, I
hated the confused
congestion and constant
bickering and fled
at every opportunity
to the houses of
friends who had their
own rooms, enough to eat,
and even peace and quiet.
At seventeen, having
graduated from high school
(barely), I was out
the door in a heartbeat
and on to hippiedom,
Europe, the middle east
the draft, drugs, Vietnam,
marriage and my own life.
Now, forty-seven years
later, I live in a small
apartment in the other half
of that same double house
with only a cat.
My parents are departed.
Strangers own their half.
It is quiet and serene
and all mine.
Forty-seven
years of running to end up
a foot from where I began.
Even Odysseus couldn't
compete with that feat.
I enjoy living here now.
It is everything it
wasn't when I was a kid.
Still, the irony would
be apparent to an idiot.
Forty-seven years of
running in a circle.
Life, not so much a
journey as eternal return.
~mce
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 10:31 AM UTC
Writing,
Drawing and painting.
Woodworking,
Welding and making.
Circuitry,
Electronics and more.
Pneumatic, mechanic, IC chips galore.
***** in the veins,
skewed and torn.
Hangovers battled, and seemingly won...
...as the body grows numb...
...limbs waking in hazy hum.
Roll another,
Tobacco makes its mark—
Lungs defiled,
Body failing,
Cherries burn brightest in the dark.
Lets call some lucky,
That they knew from the start,
Yet I continued hoping,
He would come back and restart.
The years draw on,
The day the pickup drove away,
I screamed for him,
Did he hear? check the review mirror and then accelerate?
Children of my own, a wife, and a home.
5150,
It's waiting....
It's ready, patiently prone.
Context needed,
Needed for concepts to churn
Listen closely.
A decibel past a whisper —
A Truth heard from the urn.
May 9, 2020
May 9, 2020 at 4:39 AM UTC
How hard it is to believe in thou, when thou distrusts themselves, nor
the spoken word that departs from my own maimed mouth.
You maimed it though, feeding thou as if a baby, but your
brutality hence forth separated us and no longer are we a
conjoined twin but rather yet two separate beings, who wish upon
the same midnight star.
Speak up!
For the world has stopped on it's axis to welter in you
privy affair. Accustomed to thy nature, a forest of hindering
branches you portray as home, nether the less yielding you
furthermore from where your actual origin bellows.
Banished thee, as of criminal intent, but thou victim, and
victim thought of thou to be innocent.. then why banished?
I ponder thee..
May 17, 2011
May 17, 2011 at 11:24 AM UTC
Life is a welter of emotions.
Still you're not moved by any single action
I see your dreams crushing down the pavement
Yet, you smile.
I want that peace within me,
But I will never obtain so.
For I am not you,
And I'm jealous,
I admit.
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 2:10 PM UTC
Cast a drab shadow on my adjacent soul
And protecteth it from Helios above.
Neglected in shrouded shalom, contoured in kohl
You indefinite ruin, You darkened dove.
Obelisk towering as my shaded shelter
Untied to serve no master in dark.
Forged with fire, with brimstone in welter
Obliged to nothing, Ronin sharpened arc.
Ripped through tear of flesh and blood
Gave way my physical being of desire.
It punctured through altar, frustum of mud
Veiling ethereal magnificent, we all acquire.
Eastern deities and imperial gods,
Match not with what I awed.
Erased, my heart is not.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 5:10 AM UTC
She sighs as she settles into the image of star-crossed lovers, fated across a swirling galaxy. She feels the insistent pulsing of his radiation through the hardness of space -- each inch as barren as the last, as clear as glass, a medium rich for the communication of romance. Today he hit her with caring fists, after another of his imaginary lists. Boys, men, women, girls: in his mind she has had them all, attracted by her deep cleavage, by her round behind. She bites her lip to bleed again, to feel that need again, to be the absolute rock-bottom of someone else’s reckless devotion. It excites her to be so repellently attractive, she calls to him with crooked fingers and pretends that the smell of her last conquest lingers. She makes love to him by pulling his **** to her while pushing his face away with snarling fingers. He can’t hide the scratches there. In her bruises welter the endless depths of star nurseries, nebulae, and out of them new madness will be borne.
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 11:31 AM UTC
when the waves of the sea sang of summer,
wan midnights and flowers beguiled
by a love strong and tender in slumber,
awakening tumultuous and wild;
oh, love, sweetest love, won’t you listen
to the song that the fierce sea sang,
while the desolate waves seemed to glisten
and silver bells rang.
oh, my love, oh, my love, hear the fire
of the love that has blossomed for you,
a song full of want and desire,
and all of its dreams about you,
the wind fires up through the mountains,
the clouds fill the desolate sky,
the waters of earth fill the fountains
and all the seas sigh.
and i never felt love for another
as strong or as passionate as for you,
and my legs longed for yours like a lover,
and forever they’d stay ever true,
up high in the night sky the birds fly
and plunder the sorceress moon,
and love in her waves gives a sweet sigh
and falls in a swoon.
the solitary sea starts to whisper,
with a love that n’er knows of a god,
and the mist on the sea-wall grows crisper
as it dampens the ghosts of the sod,
and love cries out loudly at sunrise
toes dipped in the trembling dew,
forgetting the murmurs of moonrise
besotted and blue.
the wind now no longer seeks shelter,
curves the clouds who now run and then run,
sings of tides full of moonlight who welter
with tears (though no gift of the sun,)
and these tears for my love i now carry
stripped away like the sun and the rain,
our love both soulful and arbitrary,
flowing true in the vein.
the flowers of midnight are calling
like lilies with petals outspread,
on an ocean that dreams as it’s falling,
and falls like an anchor of lead,
the streams lift up high as if dreaming,
the wings of the wind’s edges bleed,
and all of their wonderful streaming
begins to recede.
the sun sung out once to the morning,
unshackled the wings of the seas
who flew as the light started dawning,
as the sea water started to unfreeze,
day more of the morning soon conjured
of magics both dreadful and free
of tenderness’s sweetly outnumbered
like your love for me.
the brightening bird grows to an ocean,
its brilliant wings full of day,
and our hearts sing out loud with emotion,
the clouds float along in their greys,
the light in the sky starts to shiver,
no longer of evening and night,
sings songs of the moon’s lonely river
her lamps set alight.
Sep 15, 2025
Sep 15, 2025 at 3:07 PM UTC
it was a saturday night when i promised myself never to fall again because i knew it would only leave me scathed to the bone and lost in the desolated world that i had unnecessarily created in the past. i had come to the realisation that there was an inevitable slough of despond, waiting to pull me mercilessly into the black hole that i knew held a despicable love that i would refuse to ignore if i did not steer clear. though, steering clear was never my forte. instead, diving idiotically into cold waters without caution was where my roots stayed, in love with the fray of things. lost in my welter of thoughts, my little pandemonium, i dreamt of you and slowly tried to fathom how we ended. was it the loss of attraction, transient chemistry or the indubitable end that had already been set in stone? because all my life, i had tried so desperately to search for nonexistent formulas for why things ended, only to accept the fact that every thing was made to be ephemeral. stop, stop, just stop! my mind never failed to repeat, yet my heart failed to comply; my stream of consciousness always led back to you. i felt alone, pathetic, mawkish even, as i dialled your number with the dignity i no longer possessed. with each ring, i tried to stop the shivers down my spine that felt like a terrible ague, knowing that you had already given up on me, on us, and wanted nothing to do with me. you were obdurate on your decision, happy to move on.
but as for me? i remain that hideous book you indifferently hide on your shelf, in the shadows of your newfound lover.
(( yet, even now, that saturday night repeats itself every single day, the vicious cycle of an ancient spiel that i cannot seem to let go, because the thought of you coming back still remains, engrained into whatever pieces of my heart i have left. ))
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 1:25 PM UTC
There's no sweet hai-ku
Equal to you or your scent.
No garden holds you.
Words alone can not
Define the undefined You.
Flowers are your eyes.
From the skies clouds fall
To be gentled by your touch.
Whispering fogs weep.
There is no perfume
No stolen, wan aroma
Equal to your breath.
Armies march blindly,
And nations worry to dust,
While you rise and bloom.
There is no hai-ku
None that I can find, mind you,
No words to your Sweet.
You are forever.
A myth in the High Garden
Of Time's Secret Song.
Our hours were short.
Yet each moment was a World.
You bloom in my dark.
Golden petals weep.
You are more than counted lines.
Hai-ku's welter in your shade.
Love has winded by.
Breezed cool past my open heart.
It was you, Summer.
Jun 7, 2011
Jun 7, 2011 at 8:02 PM UTC
*Like signing on absynth in a fanfare of fashion
Is to take on ballast to flatter the crowd,
When the primary hallmark of singular cadence
Is to minimise ******** and shout it aloud.
Cocksure and crafty in colours of rainbow
Strutting your stuff on the red carpet’s fame,
Flicking the mane in a parody’s snigger
Is like hittin’ the town on the arm of a dame.
Walkin’ the walk in a welter of windfall
Like talkin’ the talk with the hipsters at hand
Like shootin’ the **** with a blonde on the pillow
Is like playin’ with fire when you don’t understand.
So go gather your pants and head for the hillside
Sit tight on the grass and ruminate well,
Sort out your crap in the filtering moonlight….
Try coming to terms with this day shot to hell.*
M.
Sandringham
14 June 2014
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 5:48 PM UTC
I vaguely recall
whole nights of deep
refreshing slumber,
waking renewed
and ready.
Now, every morning,
I stumble into
consciousness
from an
exhausting welter
of dreams and demons
wondering who
you must ****
to get a single,
decent night of sleep
around here?
- mce
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 7:48 AM UTC
Blue wine in a glass chalice
for him to drink after ************
He'd rather welter in earthly pleasures
than confront his disciples now.
The sheep has a lost shepherd.
And he'd like to take a boat
back to his earlier self
and find out what he could have
otherwise been,
where he could have
otherwise sailed.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 12:26 PM UTC
There's no other feeling like
Feeling... empty.
Where there's no place to call home
until I turn the age of twenty.
Mother doesn't want me coming back
Because I offended her
And the reason why
Is because I'm transgender.
I slept at my boyfriend's
But couldn't stay long
And that's when I realized
Life is all wrong.
I'm in a hotel now
I have food and shelter
But now the things I had
I cannot welter
Where do I go next?
I don't know
But maybe there's something
On the other side of the rainbow.
Apr 29, 2019
Apr 29, 2019 at 12:41 PM UTC
From the cliff's edge
you can watch the earth move.
Hover over the waters
and see how the Spirit blows
and broods. The sea
and all its creatures still crash
and tumble and return
to their deep silences.
The sun rises and sinks
below the waves. The curved
ocean clings to earth’s edge,
obedient, except where
something urges it upward.
The voice that calls
forth the mountains and summons
pelicans and wild geese
says to all things, Rise.
Consent to the upward urge
that calls you out of gravity
into the welter of heat and sound
and color that will not stay,
that you do not own, but may
have for a day, and then
for a night when it falls.
Jun 19, 2017
Jun 19, 2017 at 11:25 AM UTC
The pallid face
magnetizes its welter...
as the colonnade
strums the space
between the person
taken.
Colonnade of persons...
eidolon's waft of
necessitated phenomena.
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 11:32 PM UTC