"woad" poems
Lotus clouds oversee a Popsicle stick roadway,
between us only dirt that, like jellyfish, echoed away
A refugee of the Imperial Court once hid in the Zhongnan.
He survived in silk rags, and would ode The Way
Moss-haired men watch Magnavox in windows,
the evangelical salesman begging them not to toad away.
Across the street, near the top floor, a freshly-ex-student
sits at his desk in an IRS building, told five hours ago to code away
A face, topped with hot pink, brandishes her crop in a field
of signs, screaming at Wall Street's old way.
A yam of a man, braving his new home in the hills,
freedom from obligation, finds a stream to wash the woad away.
Along a country road, a man with a sandpaper'd
face counts his money, having just sold whey
Lotus clouds oversee a Popsicle stick roadway,
between us only a past that, like jellyfish, echoed a way
Twenty one years have given me many names.
Call me Kyle, or the others I've borrowed away.
Feb 2, 2013
Feb 2, 2013 at 8:56 AM UTC
i simply exercised my vocabulary in tantra-yoga... you mistook poetry for its expression of freedom curtailed... and while i did my tantra-yoga bending and pointing at unseen geometries... you simply ran a 100 metre sprint, elongating the hyphen into a boa eating itself with avarice the pepper & salt.
0i preferred the haggis / czarna kiszka
than my retrospective -
i'm doing mine early, for reasons not
necessarily true, or for that matter worthwhile...
but nonetheless assuring -
had i too the gift for painting,
and the nerve to keep a young girl captive
i'd too succumb to fathom a Grimm's tale...
live the secluded live, secluded to the point
of incubation - i'd lived it like an
Arctic explorer, by the fireplace
talking drunk tales of escaping polar bear
hunts - within a pentagram of limbs intact,
greasy Glasgow my farthest stone throw of heart...
furthest the Føroyar Øer - if only i kept my heart
as stern of the body to mind as the atom of ego
in my mind to be lost among the carousel
of weathered abstracts known
as the four winds and the thrice winding clockwork -
what abstractions to bear
from now on? a memorial service?
only in poseur marginalising tomorrow as only
a change of attire for today; so too the
semi-clad conservatives of supposed workmanship
English? takes two to a woad; whatever Argentinian
*** did to you in tango... takes two to a woad!
but there's you apish and impish entwined for
coerced blue of some other Newtonian prefect
of argument, when the painting screams far from
Norway the distinction between azure and
aquamarine is very far between
suggestion of marriage... i've ate my liver as if it were
a heart by drinking salute! to a marble stone all hopes
to have my life back! i mistook my liver for a heart!
i did that! you mistook more than i care to remember
having been forced a forgetting...
those 3 years in Edinburgh meant nothing... nothing!
spend them in South America, in Antarctica!
i will not swallow another breath with a vowel coupled
to a consonant.... until the remnants of me
believe the words: Europe united, only when Scotland
is free.
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 10:01 PM UTC
The last time she meekily made love,
she painted woad on her arms
and bemoaned the children she never bore.
She summoned their names as "Iso" and "Tope",
to her bemused lover she retorted
"I want to make Roar, not Love".
She bode on the straightest longitude
to Banyas and bathed in its spring,
fortified by Tennessee Honey,
to Quneitra, she bore wire cutters
having already wept for a town
destroyed by un-love,
where she could simply set up a commune,
To grow Kohl Rabi and learn new days.
Instead Apache helicopters and glints of Uzis
Cast the spectre of World War Three
Feb 18, 2013
Feb 18, 2013 at 3:13 PM UTC
I dream about her and see
a metamorphosis beneath
the ****** woad
I dream about her after falling
into a bed that has held the shape
of my irregular body
I dreamed about her
She is the only morning star and too
the black caterpillar in dye
below the leaves
Does her repose animate me?
I think and think I do
the thought extending to my limbs
somatic skin and the receptors in
my eyes appraising the world
In every moment of sleep and dream
where I could be awoken
from the impairment of unconsciousness
there were moments of sleep
where I did not dream and
the butterfly was not me
Oct 14, 2011
Oct 14, 2011 at 2:22 AM UTC
Pilgrimage Along The A1
For all DeBeauvilles, Beauvilles, Bevilles, and Bevils Everywhere
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries long hidden and sealed.
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.
Dec 18, 2016
Dec 18, 2016 at 6:37 PM UTC
the solemn sighs in empty halls
these vacant thoughts that line the walls
a chilly breeze through a midnight flare
waiting for the heavens to bear
to bear a heart that's ice cold and blue
thawing in the light of the moon
and with each beat that pains, that hurts
that explodes into starbursts
of woad and gold in the vastness of the sky
on this lonely
this lovely
starry,
starry night.
Aug 28, 2020
Aug 28, 2020 at 10:02 AM UTC
Leaders whom we followed
Are very rare, sporadic woad
Who cures by brain stowed
With lots of info like Spode.
Mrs. Jyoti Kumta, a Daniel, rode
Like a strong horse strode
And asked all of us to goad
Upon values, which we towed
Earlier on an unknown road.
Thanks to Jyoti who mowed
Our ignorance and sowed
Seeds of cognition and glowed.
She completely made an abode
In our hearts and not be decode.
Aug 13, 2017
Aug 13, 2017 at 8:39 AM UTC
To Where Tyrolean aurochs
graze in cools of lapis prairie
, I have come,
In A Balthazar of star- led zeal,
my scarlet hunter flown from
urban zodiacs of anxious ports,
of ailing townships steaming in
their millioned yellow orders,
shackled
sick beneath the mountain's boot.
Through dim grimmiores
of softwood press
I sleeve,
In sympathies of woad to glean
the narrative of under_ storey,
bourne to earn my Eagle .
I chance to know the trip of wind
kissed, sinuous on beaufort scales
balanced on a fingers edge to
turn October
into wine.
Oct 20, 2017
Oct 20, 2017 at 6:53 PM UTC
there's always a drunk among the living
that always courtyards
the breathing space of centipedes
in elevators for a bearable tangle of
arithmetic foot count that's mistaken
for a bunch of tourists at buckingham parlour
organising waiting lines of less than fifteen minutes
topped with the word maximum on a lease.
Jan 24, 2016
Jan 24, 2016 at 8:50 PM UTC
and so the syrian "samaritans", as the twin satans rose against king solomon's profundity in praying for wisdom but only unearthing the woad pigment for his people on their faces, striking a river-flow where no water should have abounded for them to congregate, yet congregate they did, as immigrants, to a flow of awaiting mingling of metaphors, such that the amassed people turned into a river, winding northward into the womb of the holocaust; and among many the lament, while sylvia took to expressing a stoic end, ending it all by amassing a respectable readership... she still reminds me of Eva Braun... who, after all, geneticists proved to be a Jewess - indeed that twinning of dichotomies against the practical linear expression of reincarnation disproved - the linear parallels of: one life, one life, this world; that, whatever that is, you name it god, you name it heaven, you name it hell... forget that, take hold of this.
i am fasting all day,
but i drink,
i get the calorie intake
of fire first,
then i stuff my stomach
like geese or turkeys for
slaughter;
apparently i'm purified
that way;
no, i don't take lovers,
i take prostitutes into
the garden...
less hassle; they're like socks,
i'm the shoes with
that magnetised quote:
never judge a man by his shoes,
or try to wear them;
you might get a hex of excess
skin - basically wear your own
and leave a river of echoes where
you might.
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 11:12 PM UTC
Pilgrimage Along the A1
From Peterborough drops a road
Across the Fens, into the past
(Where wary wraiths still wear the woad);
It comes to Chesterton at last.
And we will walk along that track,
Or hop a bus, perhaps; you know
How hard it is to sling a pack
When one is sixty-old, and slow.
That mapped blue line across our land
Follows along a Roman way
Where Hereward the Wake made stand
In mists where secret islands lay.
In Chesterton a Norman tower
Beside Saint Michael’s guards the fields;
Though clockless, still it counts slow hours
And centuries hidden long, and sealed.
And there before a looted tomb,
Long bare of candles, flowers, and prayers,
We will in our poor Latin resume
Aves for old de Beauville’s cares.
Dec 8, 2017
Dec 8, 2017 at 4:00 PM UTC
A cobblestone road
in a dark night dyed with woad.
Faint glitter under pale street lights.
Icy blue fog in the late night
turned electric by the passing lights
of rumbling cars that rush on by.
They leave their streaks of LED beams
that quickly fade as if a lost dream.
The night watches with a hint of a sigh.
Jan 8, 2025
Jan 8, 2025 at 5:50 AM UTC
Friday night, half five. Offices, factories,
fish docks, shops’d unload…
Pan-stick applied, lippy, slap, fresh scent…
ancient Brits in finest 'warpaint' woad.
Oxford Bags, double breasted jacket, 10 ****
Brilliantine and Brylcreem.
The Hull to Withernsea train stood ready
with a full head of steam.
The preened, the pummed - the chancers, romancers…
loves young dreamers, the loved up dancers - .
Laden with laughter, the Friday night
‘With’ Special lurches out of Hull…
15 miles of glistening steel…
an escape route from the drudge, the cludge,
to ‘Crazy Night’ chances of a naughty weekend.
It’s anything but dull…
Paragon to Scullcoates,
Southcoates & Marfleet
the carriages already full to burstin’
and the wackiness awaits.
Hedon Speedway, Rye Hill
and Burstwick trundling by…
Hedonists through Hedon’s Gate
sleepy Patrington, Hollym… With!
Piling off the platform toward digs
and guest house fun, stuffed weekend bags…
A thruppeny bit to the sack truck boy
and one of your precious ****
We’re carousing down the street,
half the city must be here
and the feeling… well it’s reet!
Gagging for a beer - but first…
“Ooh, Mr & Mrs Smith is it?”…
the landlady asks with a knowing wink.
Bags in, **** out - into The Alex for a drink…
before tripping to The Queen’s and 'Crazy Night!'
Tuppence and a jam jar (don’t ask) gets you in
and it’s mayhem - out of sight!
What a din! Lively band, cheap drinks… what a night!
Girls giggle in gaggles,
dancing round their bags…
The lads... a beer, a laugh, a leer
and passing round the ****
The whole of Hull turns out in our With
on a summer’s Friday night.
1935… the town’s throbbing…
will it, ever again, see the like?
Sep 28, 2020
Sep 28, 2020 at 8:53 AM UTC
(Yet another re-write)
....
Of crocodiles
And betrayal,
Boudica's clad
In chain mail,
Cleopatra
Uncorks
Another bottle,
Scythed-wheeled chariots
Going full throttle.
In gems and jewels
And golden bangles;
Crowns tilted
At jaunty angles.
Telling
Tales of lovers
And kingdoms lost,
And of
The clever men
They'd double-crossed
With ruby lips,
A breath of silk
And pert ******* bathed
In ***** milk,
Until the asp
And an axe
At a slender throat,
Then a sarcophagus
And
A wolfskin coat.
The Iceni queen
And Ptolemy's wife -
Whispering Sappho
In the
After-life;
Where they get
The giggles
About what happened
To Ceasar
And swap some bits of gossip
About
The Queen Of Sheba.
Apr 2, 2025
Apr 2, 2025 at 3:07 PM UTC