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Ari Feb 2010
there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia
My best Ginsberg impression.
The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.

Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the baby tortoise shell.

Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.

It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living back
Of the baby tortoise;
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.

The first little mathematical gentleman
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.

Fives, and tens,
Threes and fours and twelves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.

Turn him on his back,
The kicking little beetle,
And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,
The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal cross
And on either side count five,
On each side, two above, on each side, two below
The dark bar horizontal.

The Cross!
It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,
Through his five-fold complex-nature.

So turn him over on his toes again;
Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,
Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,
Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.

The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvedness of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one.
W Nov 2013
I never understand.

You're a whirligig, spinning this way and that
on the whim of a breeze or a sunray with me

                                                                                    trailing     behind

a demented kite catching the flak
picking up the                        slack while you fly

                                                                                                            free

libertad      por siempre
at all                       Costs

                                                                           come Hellorhighwater

not for you to pick up the flakslack
leave it to your kite demented

I never understand.
Terry Jordan Dec 2016
The sirens blared that 4th of July
Officer Duncan gave Mammy a ride
An emergency dash to the hospital
He’s 2 months premature Mammy cried

Deaf, dumb and blind is what the doctors said
To our mother when Sammy was born
But none of us kids ever were told
Until Sammy was stable and grown

Pappy declared that they’d both be fine
Not believing dire news doctors gave
We happily named him Uncle Sam
Trusting in him to be strong and brave

His 1st 5 months in an incubator
Hooked up to every device
In Newton Wellesley Hospital, 1959
A miracle saved his life

Reaching gloved hands through holes in the side
Weighing just a bit over 2 pounds
Looking more like a spindly ET
I was amazed to be hearing breath sounds

Sam worked on doubling his weight by Christmas
Nothing seemed easy or fast
Still Mammy survived the eclampsia
And Sammy went home at last

Returning a few years later
Sammy’s doctor she would find
To show off to all the nurses
Her son NOT deaf, dumb and blind

I so love my brother Sammy
Always felt like a sister and mother
I’d give all I have for the time
Just a minute more with my dear brother

I’d speak to you of those 57 years
Of the great whirligig you carved with your hands
All the times you showed up for me
Through the good and the bad our love stands

You wasted no time hating anybody
Children and dogs always your friends
Quick for a laugh despite any lack
I draw comfort that all your pain ends

The sirens blared once again for you
The ambulance came, the paramedics tried
Racing you trying to save you
All in vain, in the OR you died


Like Tommy’s rock opera is over
Perhaps you paused to speak to a stray dog
While keeping your divine appointment
By reaching right into the hand of God
Just blew out my candle in vigil for Sam, my baby brother, 12 years younger than me.  He died on the OR table as they tried in vain to save him after a tragic accident.  He’s in God’s hands now.  He had a military burial yesterday, the saddest day of my life, in the National Alleghenies veteran's cemetery.  Freezing cold & windy in Pittsburgh.  I so wanted to jump in that hearse and drive him back to Florida, like in the 'Cremation of Sam McGee' poem that I love.  I realize that was just his Earthsuit, and see him smiling in Paradise.
Nothing more than something to look at
Nothing more than a stake in the ground


Nothing more
          than movements in the wind
Richmal Byrne Jan 2011
To reminisce, while all the world is pride,
I sit it out (remembering the flood),
I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.

Look west, sharp swallows sweep the sun aside,
Tomorrow’s hurt quakes within the mind; odd
To reminisce, while all the world is pride.

In moments lost, instances regretted,
The whirligig of time spins out some mood,
(I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.)

The evening light’s remorseful spendthrift tide
Gleamed gold, for just a moment, like a god
(To reminisce, while all the world is pride)

Shining just enough to halt some sad slide,
Clouds clear away before there’s time to brood,
(I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.)


To come full circle, reach home port, and hide
Each painful loss through trial, trust or blood.
To reminisce, while all the world is pride,
I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.
st64 Nov 2013
r EVOL ution
uncoils slowly by the fire
pondering of profound-flickering in the reverse-sparks
within the pupils of shifting-light


1.
love(r) dips deep within a hardy fire-maker from another sky
body recycled and soul carried on
mind unlike any other
it’s simply a matter of Time.. holding that rusty-key of long ago
entrusted to a cavorite-place behind silent-wells whose treadle-functions heaven forgot


2.
yet what counts highest sits on a ledge of paradox
as happiness falls short upon the threshold of *fornever and never
after

there are tumult-fears to overcome
and it needs time, once again
as hearty does beseech temporal-cogs to ensure one full revolution

thanks are not enough for things that words fail to express
no specific thing to pin-point
of the immense power the discharged-missile holds
who is ever the same person in the marching of months?


3.
exponential growth is combustion understated and surreal-excitement catches
to find traction in the whistling wind.. only a quarter-whisper away
it has instead.. been phenomenally unreal

.. can't explain it
.. won't deny it


4.
the full idea has near-outgrown its twin-seal flanks
that choices came shaking.. aghast and                                
dripping its magenta-fury in heavy-drips upon the sand
                                                            ­                                            half-spilling lava-filled cups of ire            
near the camp-side        
grabbed it by the lapels        


shaking – I love you so
now, why can’t you say it?
why won’t you declare it?
what holds your yellow-*** back so?


5.
there's a power-burst in the trajectory-whirligig here..
can’t be stopped, won’t be stopped

burnt offering rises up in a scathing-hiss

  and exudes such a sweet-cleansing                                                  ­                                           

   of               ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                                           

semi-cinnamon and subtle ginger                                                    




a­nd.. love is but a word whose letters
lie
in the sand






S T – 11 nov 2013
so, yeah.. that’s about the size of it.. lol



sub:  none

none of loss
in moult of moments
let go
to see the new
annh Apr 2019
...summer’s
golden
dance
leaves
me
breathless...

‘It was a girl playing a harp, like in an orchestra. It was in this tree at our campsite. And since it was breezy weather that weekend, the girl’s arms were almost always turning.’
- Paul Fleischman, Whirligig
Nigel Morgan Sep 2012
Imagine now the room
where stands a vase
on the mantleshelf
its jasmined branch therein
an outstretched arm
reaching beyond itself
for the window where
below in the garden
this ‘Gift from God’
this oleaceae of the olive
trembles
in the crepuscular breeze.

As darkness falls
white flowers descend
whirligig
to the shelf itself
though some fall further:
to the tiled floor
and into a pair
of waiting shoes.

A benediction
on those precious feet
that will,
come morning
as they walk,
release the scent of these
quintessential flowers.

Om rutsira mani prawa taya hung
?
Anais Vionet Aug 2022
We plan, organize, gather and pack,
we fly - what liberty is this - to fly
like a weapon on the edge of heaven.

Having no power to do it ourselves
we trust security, the silver whirligig,
and the immutable laws of lift and ******.

Looking down at clouds, near the speed of sound
“Yes, I’ll have the pretzels, please, and a sprite.”
aviating thru the night, a few silent, blinking lights
wedged up in the stars to those stuck in slow cars.

We land with a bump, and reverse engine ******,
remaining in our seats until signs are revealed
we then become the many-headed impatience
to exit, to rush - for the baggage we trust
made the journey with us.

Oh, quick, grab a cab, catch a bus
the grumpy, disheveled, six of us
we weary travelers thus
were returned from vacation,
to a near dawn New Haven.
BLT Marriam Webster word of the day challenge: Immutable: not susceptible to change.
PJ Poesy Dec 2015
My whirligig giggling and jiggling in an ever gyroscopic balancing act of spotting the to and fro, does sometimes wobble recklessly, even falls down.  Revealing, revolving, evolving windy patterns and magnetism that spin pointedly upon an axis of gender nonspecific intention, it gets back up and twirls again. Whirls again, girls again, boys again, toys again, an accelerator from beginning to end, how can I be propellant and then, marry, tie it down? Letting loose these inhibitions of how such a perfect plaything may be too perfect, too divine a contraption is scary whirlwind to put my head around. Yet, this desire to go with it, oscillate and make rounds seems truer than any boxed in version of wooden wouldn't I rathers.  So there it is, to grace a pirouette with stable partner, might be a portion of the dance, picturesque, but more ensemble pieces may follow. These too add to the brilliant ballet, and we are in it together.
To commit to the non-committed?
Anais Vionet Nov 2021
It’s Friday evening, (11-12-21) and Lisa’s Birthday. To celebrate, we’re going to see “A Night With Bill Maher” at the New York Comedy Festival (we’ll be socially distanced, in an opera box). He goes on at 8:30PM and my last class on Fridays ends at 05:25 (in New Haven CT). We had to hurry.

We have our bags and we’re hustling out the dorm gate loaded down like a couple of tourists. “We want to be on the island (NYC) by 7:30 for our dinner reservation.” Lisa said. I gave her a quizzical look, checking my watch, “It’s 6:18,” I said doubtfully, “we’ll NEVER..”  “Yeah, we will,” Lisa interrupts, “we’re taking a helicopter ride!” “Whaa.. REALLY??” I gasp. “Yeah,” Lisa grinned, “my dad arranged it, his treat.” “Thanks DAD,” I say, as we climb into our Uber.

An Uber off-loads us by a helicopter 15 minutes later (at Tweed Airport). I knew the blue and white grasshopper-looking whirligig didn’t have a mind - that it wasn’t capable of feelings or eagerness, but the blades were spinning and it seemed eager to escape earth - like a bug afraid of birds.

After we boarded, a guy in a yellow vest and helmet said - above the noise - “Buckle up!” and pointed to our seat belts. The “seat belt” was a harness that made an “X” across our bodies. Once the doors were closed it became surprisingly quiet. The cabin could hold four but we were alone, facing forward, Lisa seated next to me.

The earnest-looking pilot turned to us and said, “37 air minutes to the 34th street heliport,” but before he could close the little plexiglass door to our compartment, Lisa said, “Afghan takeoff please!” He nodded and closed the window, it got quieter still.

The pilot throttled up, the jet engines whined, the rotors became frantic and we lifted up into the air - just a few feet. I held tightly to my seat sitting perfectly still, as though the helicopter were a frightened animal I didn’t want to startle. “Relax,” Lisa said, with a BIG grin, “You’re going to LOVE this.” The helo rotated 180 degrees, “Woah,” I said.

“Wait for it,” she giggled. The back of the chopper suddenly rose, my body pressed forward, hard, against the harness. I went bug-eyed - about the time I thought the whole shaky contraption would roll forward end-over-end and we’d die in a fireball, we sprang into the air like a rollercoaster ride. When we lurched skyward, I had to fight the urge to hurl but Lisa roared with laughter.

After a moment we leveled out. “That wasn’t funny.” I said, still trembling and deadly serious. I opened a bottle of water, took a big swig and I felt myself relax a bit. “I almost threw up!” I wiped my hair away from my face. “I’m sorry,” Lisa said in a pouty, baby appeasing way. I glowered.

“Seriously,” she said, in a more reasonable voice, “I HAD to do it - I COULDN’T resist.” Unbuckling her harness she scooted over by me and took my hand. “It was a little mean, I know. I SWEAR, I’ll never, ever, EVER, trick you again.” She said, adding a girl scout salute that morphed into a pinky promise and we were suddenly whole again.

“I mean, it only works ONCE - and your FACE! - GOD!, I should have videoed that,” she laughed again - I just rolled my eyes and turned to look out into the darkness.

Maybe it was that take-off, but at first, all I could think of was falling to a watery death. I never get nervous on commercial flights, they feel like solid, white noise filled living rooms but this chopper was small and trembling, like an economy car or a hayride.

There was a TV screen that showed our altitude (9,000 feet and climbing) and airspeed indicator (140 knots) - I had to remind myself that trustworthy physics was at work somewhere behind this clippity-cloppity contraption our lives depended on.

The view of Long Island Sound, just after dusk, WAS amazing and soon I began to enjoy it. I counted 30 ships and barges lit up like birthday cakes against the watery darkness - and the approaching lights of New York City looked like a glittering tiara being worn by the horizon.

Ok, I thought, I have to write about this.
a scary first ride for me
Wk kortas Dec 2016
The collie, fur grayed and patchy, lopes away from his house,
Ostensibly bound for nowhere in particular,
Knowing only that it is that time, his time,
And, as he wanders away for to await that last solitary purpose,
Meanders past a pock-marked and rust-patched single-wide,
Occupied by a young woman (a girl, in truth)
Nursing a newborn, child whose father
Is one in a wide range of unpalatable options.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

They walk, the residue of some boy meets girl,
Along the quiet main street of an equally quiet town,
Utility poles garnished with benign, contented snowmen,
Low-hung five-pointed auguries strung with tinsel,
Brobodingnagian candy canes swaying rhythmically in the wind.
They have arrived at the unspoken yet mutually understood conclusion
That they have taken their particular accident of birth and geography
As far as such a thing may go, yet they walk hand-in-hand,
Fingers intertwined, though tentatively, in some interim rationale.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

On a hill above town, there is a rambling, low-slung edifice
Multiple-winged single-story octopus of a house
Well appointed though sparsely and diffidently decorated,
More hotel than home, decidedly transitory in form and function.
In one of the rooms, dimly lit with little ornamentation
Save a Charlie Brown-esque tree squatting forlornly on a bureau,
A woman is reading softly, almost mechanically,
As if it is a story she has read out loud countless times before,
To a man who is heeding, perhaps, though it is clear
That the act is more essential than the words on the page.
They have a daughter who would be there,
Sitting in a chair or on the edge of the bed,
Hands clasped, though in service of or supplication to nothing tangible,
But she is home with her toddler, a whirligig of a child
Who has found some hidden presents
And is tearing away the wrapping from the boxes,
Laughing unrestrainedly as he showers himself
In a red-green-gold ticker-tape maelstrom.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
By some unintentional thievery,
we had a high desert day today,
way out here on the prairie.

Low wind, cooling, and
astonishingly dry.

A blue, deep as high-altitude
cobalt. 
Well, almost.

The woman, still no taller
than a child. The brother,
still kind, still stubborn.

Thinking, sometimes out loud,
the memories coming to each
are sometimes the same ones.

A family working together
in the woods they loved.

This younger brother, so
small, smiling to himself
as he carried kindling.

And the quiet brother,
there too, deep thoughts
widening his hazel eyes.

Maple leaves, still green,
and whirligig seed pods,
pile up now in these
brown paper bags.
©Elisa Maria Argiro
Emma Jenny Apr 2014
I dread the trek
that takes me down
the whirligig
that spins me round
and round

I’m fastened to my plastic horse
a ripple of fatal
felicity
I fall
but float
my body buoyant

a murmurous being
dissembles my mind
and again with the haunting
the horror

rust eats the bones
moss creeps
consumes
the once proud souls who
no longer grant me
satisfaction

blissful insanity.

now the image
evanescent
my mind unravels
as I grip
my existence

no longer stranded
I am aware
alert
I am alive
When I first caught glimpse of
that jimmy-rigged
thirst trap insta-photo with your
bobble-head
leaning alongside the lowest
base note piano keys
I considered you a casual medium
invoking with the guileless eyes of
the deceased once-was heat of a
surly yet
casual Pop Star

I couldn’t help but notice
that your flame, if you will,
as his flame before you,
was
OUT
Like the last embers
of a campground fire in
Yosemite National Park.

Depleted
Discarded
in a basement somewhere
in the San Fernando Valley
shoveling coal like Cinderella,
You
Never to be allowed near a stringed instrument
Nor a mic.
Nor an amp.
Not even the littlest sister’s
Cowsills Tambourine.

I’m not the only cuddly toy.
I’m not the only choo choo train.
I’m not the only cherry delight.
I’m not the only
I’m not the only

Stage 8 hosts
a gathering
of dem dakota witches
and while they tried to concur,
Rosemary screamed
into her chocolate mouse stupor
“This is no teen dream of 1974!”
“What about the 60s?”
a naked old witch
encircling her bed
inquired tentatively.

You could be absolutely mad
Which would explain
the kooky
flirty-fishing
cultish
eyeball thing
but what’s the success rate
after all this
photography,
I reckon?
Who would take the bait, anyhow?
“You’d be surprised,” sneers another witch.
“Shaddup” snaps Castevets
Fozzie Bear just told you to **** his diseased ****.
Roman stands behind him
holding his own,
limp,
between clammy hands,
hopeful and
biding his time.

!

Funny it should be
Me
who would be the
One
to make
You
feel
Sad.

“I think the terms are about to change, ” screeches another witch,
this one standing by
the yellow curtained
shuttered window,
Which holds within its folds
the electric air-conditioning unit
Whirring
Like Mary, Mother of God.
Or a corpulent and rotund
Laughing Gelatinous
Belly of Buddha

So, it would appear,
that in just one year’s time
or perhaps just a couple of months
Trapped in your household
With audio and visual stimulation
of all
permutations
keyboards
delivery services
and real-time isolation
Within an mise-en-abysme of
traps upon traps upon traps,
thirsting,
that you’ve become perhaps madder still.
Mercury in the lining of the top-hat mad.
“And who hasn’t?” asks that naked witch again.
I’d add that you’ve put on a few.,
Which a lot of people have done lately,
No judgement
But I doubt you are baking a lot of bread
And you look a lot older than you should.

So I wonder,
how do you get to that
vibratory chi
when you’re walled off like this?
Once you get to the real stuff
you’ll look
so much better.
This quandary engages me enough
to indulge in a whirligig
which can incorporate, if I want it to,
Courbet’s L’Origin du monde,
the envy-soaked diamantine stares of a *****
yet perpetually ignored roadie,
Vampires
And street-level prostitution.
It’s a crisis!

I would have thought that you could just
Draw it all straight to you
Without actual flesh
Bring it through the stucco’d walls
Or down from the ceiling,
quickly and upon demand.
Sub-molecularly.
No traffic and clean air make haste.
But no.
That’s not working right now is it?
Magician Reversed.
Chris Weallans May 2015
An eruption of exuberance
To thrill the dawn with light
And dance flowers in the breeze,
Still fresh from the bed's wallow.
To break the snoring drift
Towards the eye glistening moment of waking.

And then all these senses rush at once
To ferret and fidget the confines of my flesh
To dance their whirligig explosions in my blood
With eager threads of excitement pulsing in my skin
To chase the schoolboy morning
beyond the hills
With rattling bicycles on muddy trails.

I stutter out the flush and form in words
Darting thus and fro across the screen
like electric jangling
From the dangling fingers
Wrangling with the hammering keys
As if these magic notions could fluster
Beyond the moments of my joy.

My soul aches to be OUT THERE!
Beyond those moments of joy
Beyond the sleeping bedrooms
Beyond the bicycles
Beyond the hills, and flowers and sky
I want to spiral like galaxies
And dance with planets on the pin cushion dark
Sparkled with stars and clustered nebulae.

I really can’t believe, sometimes,
That all this sense of being
Could be contained in me.
Negative Creep Mar 2016
It's hard to die in springtime,
you know,
But I'm leaving for the flowers
with my eyes closed.

Whirligig birdies, oh you're so cute
you put up a good fight against the wind
blowing at you
shyspy Aug 2019
The fly lit on a propellor of
a washerwoman whirligig
watched by a whisky sour wino
wearing a scratchy candied wig
he wondered about a wing-ding
under the comeuppance of rain
we struggle that way
you and I...
like ants burdened with twigs
close the door behind you
walk back in
.
Sky seeker , tall wonder with carnation red cloak
Doomed bush vermin , cornered red oaks braced in the treetop shadow
Strolling tearful wire-grass purple meadow
Copper thicket avenues tinged in nutmeg swirl
Mellow voices from the songbird world
Faces within Sugar Pines , white mountains
in Alabama sky , the eye of God in newborn
western twilight , the breath of cool salvation ,
quickening , trembling , addressing , correcting
The door led to the heavens opened , the hall of
our galaxy exposed , the untold wealth of starlight
tending our burden with unrecognized answers ,
the meandering whirligig movements of my time continue predestined
Copyright October 20 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
Eleete j Muir Aug 2019
An enamoring dowsabel at Ib's eve
Zion proclaiming 'hosanna'
A peri lifting the anathematization off
The recusant hand of the eternal by
Dinn of God; within a whirligig of death
Rearing the abscence of perfection,
The misforgiving serpent fangs,
The Herald star. The father of lies
Circumscribed: a Dybbuk
By a ghostly tear, the revealer of truth
Upon the brilliance of the inner most
Flame in the mist of the fire entering
The ecosphere subsistent as a profession
Of the faith; to work out ones
Salvation clothed in pain, to console
A mourning soul within the sovereign
Lady to know thyself.
Life a flame of fortune!

ELEETE J MUIR
(a lighter piece sup *** wit tree)

'm, oh yes mud hum,
     who hoop fully iz zaftig
and/or mister
     Jack Rabbit, whoever wig
gulls or crinkles their nose
     creating a lil whirligig
at this bit of flummery unrig
yule lated impossible

     to make cogent
     and/or tangential with trig
perhaps best red
     after taking a swig
of vintage carrot juice with a sprig
of favorite herb, more'n enough
     to slake thirsting herd
     at the yearly

     Peter Rabbit shindig,
which senseless literary rig
ma roll even Bugs Bunny
     trump petting donned Taj Mahal
     swiftly tailored hare
     reed styled periwig,

     (would turnip his nose),
     button size or overbig,
yet all Joe King aside,
     and please do not think me a ****
excepting (Trix are for kids, eh...?)

this intentional faux paw, an
distress signal tis ideally geared
     for a Unitarian
     herbalist hook can
transform this pro
     fessed human imposter,
     (who in truth got cursed
     as a **** sapien

     by Bunny Foo Foo with elan)
particularly in the guise of Han
nub bull the cannibal,
     (whose unisexual name Jan)
also doubles up

     as my birth month
     dwells in Lan
zing, Michigan, and earns
     keeps employed as a nan

knee, yet experiences inner pan
dumb moan he yum,
     (seized with grippe to dig
     in Farmer Brown's garden), and ran
like the dickens
     all the way to Tran
sill vane ya leaping
     across Atlantic Ocean forced
     to adopt the lifestyle of a Van
dull with razor sharp buck teeth.
Philip Lawrence Apr 2018
Earth tumbles sideways, and
I lay in heavy snow.
I swallow deep breaths of cold night air.
It is painful to breathe as
I face blue-black sky.
Stars, brightest before dawn,
cluster above me, and
dance like a whirligig.
I wheeze.
I think I am breathing deeply.
I am not.
My ribs feel to bend and crack
and I clutch at my chest, move my arms.
The small exertion does not lift me up,
it does not ease the pain.
Oh, ****.
I understand, and I try to call out.
I can make no words,
only a puff of vapor that
dissipates into exposed brick.
What time is it?
I cannot make much sound,
and it is difficult to move.
I wonder when someone will see me.
The arc of the streetlight,
blocked by the maple tree.
I should have cut it down last fall.
Lost to a shade tree?
Marguerite will not wake for an hour.
She will be alright, so will the kids,
families of their own now.
What was that poem?
Third grade, no fourth.
I read it in class.
Billy Herschel hit me with an eraser
when I finished.
The wet snow was too heavy.
I see the plastic shovel
upright in the drift.
Uncle Nick went like this.
Dumb *******, I knew better.
I hear car tires rolling noisily down the street.
I lift a black glove and move my hand.
My ribs stab at me. It is too dark.
I cannot see her. She cannot see me.
I let my hand fall deeply into the snow.
The crystals make their way under my collar.
It is cold, very cold, and it feels good,
keeps me awake, as I feel very tired,
pushed mightily, deeper into the earth.
My watch. I am not wearing a watch.
I will not know what time I will die.
I think to blow puffs of air into the sky,
and I hope that someone
will see the tiny smoke signals.
I smile at the thought.
I hate to dance.
Embarrassed to dance,
embarrassed all my years,
and there is now little time.
I hope there is time.
I am sleepy.
I think of my dog, gone some twenty years.
I see his paws, his gray muzzle, and
his last three breaths.
A single sparrow finds the telephone wire.
It is dawn,
my eyes are closing,
and the dark is warm.
Civet Wright Mar 2017
Your heart is living in my pulse
Like the chronicler beneath
The thousands of whirligig

Rocky pony necks me
As how the God of time piece
Treasured a tear of grass
https://youtu.be/6azPGz4LGQM
Your hair,
Smelling like the sun...
The taste of sweet summer cherries,
Still dancing in the aroma of your eyes...
And brightly colored lilac curtains in your room ...
putting a glass on your table.
The air,
Moving the clouds in your chest...

The light is on...!
The curtain, allows light to enter...

" My Jasmine...!? "
" I love you..."  ( With the sound of laughter ) "

Your voice,
Was a rainbow... 🌈
If the sound was colored...

You are a river...
passing through
my neck...
I have fallen...
Near the daffodil flowers in your eyes...
I will become a thousand small fish...
A thousand trembling goldfish in the pond...
🐟🌊 🐟🐟🐟🌊 🐟🌊

" Oh that blue whirligig!!!
The yellow....!
And the pink one...!
I'm seeing those shiny whirligigs
of your childhood... "
What was the sound of your blowing like?
Your eyes,
giving a thousand colors and memories...

You are floating...
passing through the sound of a woman's laughter...
I will never wear a wedding dress...
To paint on its whites...
I have no child !!!

Oh september!
The end of colored paper...
And the beginning of the blue sun...
You are my mother's breast cancer...
That Growing inside of me...
I thought I was pregnant...
Last night !!!
Touching the curvature of my belly...
From the top of my white knickers
With its bright pink flowers...
When my mother's scarf turns to twenty-nine years old again!

" My Jasmine...?! "
" I love you... "

In illusion,
The voice of a woman...
Calling you...
From afar...

You have reached near the window...
Looking at me...
turning to you...
White lace dress...
Laughter In The Sun....
☀️
From the sound of which woman's laughter, am I reaching to you now?
In your ear,
I become a thousand voices...
The play of the sun's rays, On the tip of my brown *******, getting hot...

Closing my eyes...
I always think If I was blind, How could I understand that  the sound of the sea is blue?!
The leaves of the trees are green!?
In glitter...
In the melancholy of the golden leaves of May...
Your face, dancing
Among the glitter of golden winds ...
And the grape leaf,☘
Greeting me...

Thinking of you...
From afar...
How are your hands moving?!
Does my mother's earrings have the yellowness of the sunflowers?
🌻🌻
Every sound,
becoming your voice...
Now...
Cheese crystals...
Pieces of barbari bread on the table...
The pungent odor of tangerine,
In my mother's hands...
And a tomato...
I'm dying now...!
مَن الآن مي ميرَم...!
But I'm happy That I know you...
امّا خُوشحآلَم که تُو رآ...
In the past and the future...
دَر گُذَشته و آیَنده مي شِنآسَم...
You have been...!
بُودِه اي...!

Narrated by me in persian
:-) 🌸

Check out yasaman johari on #SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/user-75031766?ref=clipboard&p=a&c=1&si=70b647950d594634a8fe6674d6f38aa7&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Derrek Estrella Nov 2017
Thunder shattered lightning o’er the moor
The hoarse women spoke of what’s to come
Beneath the set of sun, they adjure
The fated, bloodied fool of the kingdom

Written here is an early epitaph
Of the golden well and its fall
The order’s domain, once in paragraphs
Stained, slain and cursed by its thrall

The Captain of the ministry of peace
His bloodied steel, speaking of some rage
The fires hung, the creases on their knees
The pawn, the hero, of a noble gauge

Major Mylland and General Barnow
Emptied their guns and scarred their bones
A rebel slain, the traitor thane in tow
Mylland rested on a stolen throne

They stumbled on the old women of fate
Who knelt and spoke of riches yet to come
For them and their own kin, a golden gate
They fled with a quick tongue of costly sums

These men, taken aback by many a dream
Mylland’s fate, it seemed to serve him well
The sinister truths have given him royal seams
How close to hell must one want themselves?

King Dunwell heard of Cornell’s dead
Cried out freely, by his silvered son
The thane confessed, now less a man by the head
With the fall of boys, came ****** won

Mylland and Barnow were revered
With carpets of sand and diamond busts
It was heir Mnaleer, the son he feared
Shall Mylland be a king, return him to dust?

The silhouette of the once-great gestalt
And its walkways of emerald tongue
In thickened, wary blood it found its halt
And rides in the pocket of fate’s lung

Lady Mylland received a letter
From her love, who did not take the reins
Unsexed herself as the cosmic order’s debtor
Duly indulged in some gain from pain

Dunwell arrived on the palest day
Praised the charms of the seething Myllands
In this jovial banquet, he sways
And greets the ravaged likes of ****** hands

Mylland caught himself and his drink
And sought to render prophecies untrue
But his wide did not fall for meek links
And spat on Mylland’s wishes to rue

He happened upon Barnow, who would tell
Of cursed thoughts and nightmares neighbouring
His pillow, Mylland shrugged and claimed all’s well
And set a later time for his flings

Mylland happened upon a floating blade
The blood stained air beside a shaken mind
With reflections, his cowardice fades
Promptly adheres to his calling’s binds

The blow to shake the sun, committed then
Perpetual stains that water can’t wipe
Murdered was the sleep of the kin
The loyal, now chained to the void’s gripe

A drunken porter named Bazeleu
Mocked the visitors outside his door
Drank and whispered of a distilled dew
Droopily continued his chore

Mygdla, a righteous fighting man, walked in
And greeted his hollow heart, a vicious sight
The blood of kings that dwelled within
He called an echo of the kingdom’s blight

Sons of the king, Mnaleer and Delireey
Sought to flee from miming as a home
With sharpened smiles and daggers, merrily
They escaped from corruption's shattered dome

Mylland, granted a crown by all and none
Broke the stationary cosmic hierarchy
It brought eyeless nights and blood-red suns
Oh, to find oneself in fleeting patriarchy

But he grew weary of the women’s words
Anxious of Barnow and his kingly son
Should they rule, or be ash under his sword?
Now Barnow rots, his child meekly runs

On the finest feast of the night
Mylland’s sins appeared in tattered rags
The dead Barnow, a ghost, a visage, a blood-addled sight!
The guests fled with his sanity in bags

In his rage and royal dissatisfaction
He duly had Mygdla’s family maimed
The truest, newest colour of his deluded faction
Of one man, shall comeuppance be his bane?

Mygdla, in righteous fury and despair
Sought revenge and gathered men of war
And found Mnaleer in hopes to repair
Their lost purpose, ****** be Mylland’s scar

Lady Mylland talked into her pillows
Asleep of the dreaming, newfound dread
Of her guilt of fate, she would bellow
Dead is the heart of the pierced head

Mygdla’s forces came in forceful stride
The sweeping vanguard of the vengeful eyes
They walked as trees to the kingdom sides
Sharpened their resolve for due demise

Mylland pondered on a hollow throne
A fruitless crown and a plastic sceptre
Relied on fate’s dubious loans
And found his wife’s visage, now a still spectre

Tomorrow, tomorrow is to never come
For life is foolish, with its voices and vice
He steeled himself for his solitary kingdom
His shield, a shining rut of chance’s dice

The smoke and fire, war rages true
Screams followed by screams of vain quarrel
With Mygdla’s entrance, vengeance shall ensue
And hereby comes the full fool’s final peril

Mylland and Mygdla clashed with rage
Mylland fell to his vaulting ambition
Mylland’s head, severed by the closing page
Mylland’s final breath of his mind’s attrition

Mnaleer became king
The people, overjoyed
Merrily sing
Of the ceasing void

This was the story of the Whirligig Well
The beaming gestalt, the golden land
The dew of morning, drank after hell
A sempiternal bond to fate’s twisted hand

Take heed, take heed!
These are malleable times
Purposeful places
Stringed pages
Sharon Flynn May 2019
my moon sister phase
glowing in gold
calls me home
never alone
we two are one
our Luna singing the stars
into lullaby sleep
while we don pajamas
and have a pillow fight
so many rhymes
imposed on moon verses
when all we ever need
are words that dance
across the moon's face
and wrap us in a bond
as natural as sisters
catch my sister moon's light
hold it in a small ball of white
toss it back and forth
two sisters playing catch
in a whirligig pool
of crescents and heart-beams
Third Eye Candy Jan 2019
there is no summer in my skin but the bees and the lint
clinging to the flop sweat of my invisible dreaming. clinging to my notion
of anything Other than this.
i have clover in my teeth and James Joyce in my marrow like a cog
in fever… I keep leaving you where I found myself at a loss.
but i return with a poem always
to breadcrumb you out.

but here’s the thing….
my kind of disrepair is a healing cacophony that has the music
that kills the lover the most. Life is the whirligig of a purpose
Loving harder than a grave mistake.
And all time is a momentous conclusion
that continues.
without a Cause.

Just my kind of broke.

II

there is no summer in my skin… only January's tongue
kissing dark and cement.
a slim hemisphere of wide eclipse
on the thinkless edge of my enormous
insignificance.
i come from a horde of unhinged things
where rabbits run like blank stars on garters
the Creator gave to women
for to hear them
bargain… in a silhouette
of extinguished
hard loss.

Regardless.

My kind of broke is how i know this
for no reason… and my charms
clink in the soft spot of my terminal Forever.
Mocking the Everafter
of a wrong Sun

all night.

— The End —