Skeleton's
This house holds no secrets
Its tattle-tale bones
Rattle
A visage of truth
Nimble webbed echo's
Stair steps spiral
Ascent or descent
Access rooms
Each a memory
Unto themselves
Covered in dust
Engraved
Etched in stone
Over years of lore
Ah the rumors groan
The roof-indelible
Editor's pen blue
Is attached to a
Foundation
With a century's entire
Legacy's view
poem by Theodora Onken
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Related quotes
Sonnet: An Empty House Remembers
The empty house around me ticks and creaks,
A moody end to evening's gentle rains,
A brooding quiet as the daylight wanes,
The secret language empty houses speak.
What stories might this house preserve entire
In rhythmic code composed of click and groan?
Does House recall a sadness with each moan?
Is laughter stored in every plank and wire?
And how might I, a fleeting visitor,
Acquire an ear for stories trapped in time,
And wrap a tale or two in words and rhyme?
How can I tap the House's secret lore?
In silence soft the house slips off to sleep.
Alone I sit, in darkness vast and deep.
poem by Russell Collier
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The Sounds Of The Jackhammer
today i shall hear the sounds
of the jackhammer
as they start breaking
the hard cement of
this old house's foundation
for soon they shall build
a new stair
for the second floor
of this new house
that we are constructing
we earn twelve years
of the peaceful life
love still dwells
our communion strong
our vision unwavering
this is our answer to
their questions
this is our way of
resolving the doubts
up there there shall be
no walls and no roof
it is the stars and the moon
at night that we all want to see
we shall have tea
and our company
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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These Old Bones
Writer Dolly Parton
These old bones will tell your story
These old bones will never lie
These old bones will tell you surely
What you cant see with your eye
These old bones, I shake and rattle
These old bones, I toss and roll
And its all in where they scatter
Tells you what the future holds
Oh, she lived up on the mountain
Eleven miles or so from town
With a one-eyed cat named Wink,
A billy goat and a blue tick hound
Her graying hair was braided
And wrapped around her head
And her dress was long and faded
And her home a rusty shed
In a little pouch of burlap
Tied with a piece of twine
There were bones all shapes and sizes
Gathered through the course of time
Shed throw them out before you
She swore that she could see
The present, past and future
She could ready your destiny
Everybody knew about her
Came to get their fortune read
Concerning health and wealth and power
Who to love and when to wed
Well, I just like helpin people
Im just glad that I could help
Why, I know everybodys secrets
But I keep it to myself
These old bones will tell your story
These old bones will never lie
These old bones will tell you surely
What you cant see with your eye
These old bones, I shake and rattle
These old bones, I toss and roll
And its all in where they scatter
Tells you what the future holds
Some called her witchy woman
Some said she was insane
Some said she was a prophet
Still everybody came
Just because a bodys different
Well, that dont make em mad
Well, theyve crucified a many
For the special gifts theyve had
I had often heard about her,
Dreamed about her now and then
For I, too, was clairvoyant,
Came about when I was ten
I was fascinated with her
And the things Id heard about
And I knew some day Id meet her,
And one day it came about
Well, I knowd that you uz acomin
I could feel it in my bones
These old bones have also told me
That I wont be here for long
Did you know that you uz adopted?
Did you know you oncet was mine?
But the county took you from me,
Said I wasnt right in mind
But I just knowd I had to see you
Fore these bones was laid to rest
So I conjured up a message
It musta worked, I guess
This gift runs in the family
I know you also know
And I passed this gift on to you
These old bones, theyre just for show
These old bones will tell your story
These old bones will never lie
These old bones will tell you surely
How to live and when youll die
These old bones, I shake and rattle
These old bones, I toss and roll
And its all in where they scatter
Tells you what the future holds
I held her hand while she was dyin
And with the funeral through
I headed on back up the mountain
For Billy, Wink and Blue
And that little pouch of burlap
With those bones so worn and old
She give me somethin special
Now every time I throw
These old bones will tell your story
These old bones will never lie
These old bones will tell you surely
What you cant see with your eye
These old bones, I shake and rattle
These old bones, I toss and roll
And its all in how they scatter
Tells you what the future holds
Now I cant tell you what you want to hear
I just tell you what I see
Its these old bones atalkin
Blame it on them; dont pack it on me
Its just like that time that there boy died
Up at the sawmill
Well, I knowd who done it, but I never said
And I knowd when somebody is a cheatin
Or when somebodys baby was gonna be born dead
But unless somebody just plain out and asked me
Well, I just figured there aint no point goin around actin like you know
everything, just cause you might.
Ah, you know girl I want you to take these bones
Cause I dont want no youngun of mine agoing around unprepared
You just remember that the magic is inside you
There aint no crystal ball
song performed by by Dolly Parton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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They Are Tearing Down My Grandfather's House
(An NLP Editor's Choice Award Winner in Verdant Lands of Spring) They are tearing down my Grandfather's house,
it's made of wood and brick and stone.
The windows they've removed. To them it's real
estate, to me it's my heart being ripped in two.
The realtors, the bankers, the moneymen don't understand.
A house is more than made of wood, a house is made of man. My Grandfather's house is a memory that will
endure after it's torn down.
He's been gone for near thirty years, but his
house had lived on.
I know the world is made of change, and change
is all that's real. But one thing I cannot change,
that is the way I feel. I wipe a tear in the falling rain,
because they are tearing down my Grandfather's
house, and it gives me pain.
I love him as if it were yesteryear,
his wit and smile as warm as the sun.
The house once stood to remind me, but that too
is gone. They are tearing down my Grandfather's house,
it's made of wood and brick and stone.
Yet a house if more than made of wood,
a house is made of love.
poem by David A. Webb
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The Threshold Stone
WHEN I went to live in the little house,
That stands on the hilltop alone,
What touched me most of all
Was neither roof nor wall,
But the smooth, worn face of its old threshold stone.
For when I entered that little house,
With its four rooms cool in the heat,
And its windows clean and bright,
There it lay, new-washed and white,
With its tale of the coming and the going of feet.
Then I lost count of time in that little house,
And the world and its things all about,
And I hearkened there, alone,
To the footfalls on that stone,
Of the young coming in and the old going out.
And the folk that had dwelt in that little house,
They were mute, spectre-mute, at my side —
The young man, strong and bold,
And the grey man, wise and old,
And the little, pinched woman and the new-made bride.
Oh, often in haste to that little house
Came love in the night-time alone,
And dallied there a while,
With a little, wistful smile,
And with feather-weight feet on the old threshold stone.
And men hurried home to that little house
When the round of the daytime was o'er
With its worry, heat and noise,
And kissed their girls and boys,
And the patient little mothers that waited at the door.
Though I dwell now no more in that little house
That stands on the hilltop alone,
Yet this I got from it —
This human story writ
On the smooth, worn face of its old threshold stone.
Though they take stone from stone in that little house,
Making litter of all it has been.
Yet they shall not destroy
All the grief, all the joy,
All the youth, all the love that its threshold has seen.
poem by Roderic Quinn
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On the Edge of an Old Well
Dark interpretation of the water: broken forehead in the mouth of the night,
The boy's bluish shadow sighing in black pillows,
The rustling of the maple, steps in the old park,
Chamber concerts which fade on a spiral staircase,
Perhaps a moon which quietly climbs the steps.
The gentle voices of the nuns in the decayed church,
A blue tabernacle which slowly opens,
Stars which fall on your bony hands,
Perhaps a walk through abandoned rooms,
The blue tone of the flute in the hazel bushes - very quietly.
poem by Georg Trakl
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This House
(nile rodgers)
This house is built
On a foundation of love
This house is built
On a foundation of love
Our toys are in the attic baby
Pictures on the wall
We can see our memories
From the days past in the mirror
Down the hall, oh yeah
Our love will survive in our own little paradise
So inspired, so inspired
Palatial it may not be
But its a home and a castle to me
A dream from a magazine
And well never give it up cause
This house is built
On a foundation of love
This house is built
On a foundation of love
Ill try to comfort you baby
You try to comfort me yeah
I know you love me
With all your heart, oh yeah
cause you say you do
You know that when you are sad
Ill be there in a flash
At the drop of a hat, oh yeah
cause I want you to feel love
And you dont have to say a thing
You dont have to ask, cause baby
This house is built
On a foundation of love
This house is built
On a foundation of love
Maybe well strike it rich
One day really make it big
And I know because our love is so strong
Well always have a home
This house is built
On a foundation of love
This house is built
On a foundation of love
This house is built
On a foundation of love
This house is built
On a foundation of love
This house is built
On a foundation of love
This house is built
On a foundation of love
song performed by by Diana Ross
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Truth and Lies
'We can hide ourselves behind our walls of secrecy
But in doing so we hurt not only ourselves but the ones around us
Secrets can remain Secrets for only so long
Guilt can get a person to spill their guts without hesitation
Lies will burn a hole into your heart and make you hurt
Truth will mend it in a hurry as long as it comes first
Truth is the only thing that won't hurt me, but to lie then tell the
truth will hurt me more than the truth from the start
Trust can be a very strong foundation
but when congealed with lies to save the other from pain
This foundation can wear away and disappear in the end'
(JLK) ,01-06-07
by Josh Kellar
poem by Danielle Franklin
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223
sweet rumors
Deserted house
With thatched roof
Along the Dicayo River
Rumors are sweet
On a swarm of bees
Who now live there
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Memory's Mansion
In Memory's Mansion are wonderful rooms,
And I wander about them at will;
And I pause at the casements, where boxes of blooms
Are sending sweet scents o'er the sill.
I lean from a window that looks on a lawn;
From a turret that looks on the wave.
But I draw down the shade when I see on some glade
A stone standing guard by a grave.
To Memory's attic I clambered one day
When the roof was resounding with rain,
And there, among relics long hidden away,
I rummaged with heart ache and pain.
A hope long surrendered and covered with dust,
A pastime, out-grown and forgot,
And a fragment of love all corroded with rust,
Were lying heaped up in one spot.
And there on the floor of that garret was tossed
A friendship too fragile to last,
With pieces of dearly bought pleasures that cost
Vast fortunes of pain in the past,
A fabric of passion, once vivid and bright,
As the breast of a robin in Spring,
Was spread out before me-a terrible sight-
A moth-eaten rag of a thing.
Then down the deep stairway I hurriedly went,
And into fair chambers below;
But the mansion seemed filled with the old attic scent
Wherever my footsteps would go.
Though in Memory's House I still wander full oft,
No more to the garret I climb;
And I leave all the rubbish heaped there in the loft
To the hands of the Housekeeper, Time.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Bones!
I well remember Sir Gordon Fitch
As much for his wealth as his plain language,
A spade was a 'bloody shovel' to him,
In truth, he was an arrogant man.
The Seventh Earl in a Stately Home,
But ruined then, half falling down
Though what remained was a grand old pile
It sat in the woods by Barkly Stile.
Three living rooms and a massive hall,
And fifteen rooms if I do recall,
The house had seventeen chimneys there
Soot-caked and brooding, beyond repair.
Three of the fires were boarded in,
The rooms so cold with the house snowed in,
We shivered and sat with our coats still on,
Scarves and gloves in the morning room.
When questioned, Gordon would shrug and say,
'Don't know, old man, it was just that way!
My Gramps did anything he saw fit,
A hundred years since that fire was lit.'
'My father told me to leave it there
The chimney smoked, and it choked the air,
There was no heat from the fire when lit -
You'll just have to make the best of it! '
My bedroom, too, like an old ice chest,
I couldn't sleep, I could get no rest,
I made my way to the library
Where a fire burned, and the books were free.
Old manuscripts ran along one wall,
Family papers, brittle and old,
Some volumes of ancient erotica
Under the name 'Biologica'.
Early prints of Victorian Dames
With not a stitch, and of course, no names,
I spent too long in there, I'll avow,
Comparing the women of then, with now.
I soon got restless and turned to walls
Of papers dealing with Barkly Hall,
Dry old screeds of entail and law
Way back to the old Crimean War.
One such cutting that caught my eye
Had told of the village of Barkly Stile,
A lad, just seven, had slipped away,
The villagers searched for him, night and day.
They searched the woods, they scoured the wold,
The ancient bell in the steeple tolled,
They set the hounds in the fields round there
But nothing was seen of Benjamin Clare.
Benjamin Clare had been and gone
Like a rainbow after a summer storm,
His mother did nothing at all but weep,
His father, he was the chimney sweep.
They left the village of Barkly Stile,
Came up in the world, so ran the tale,
They bought a house that was grand, complete,
A little bit rich for a chimney sweep.
I mulled on it, went back to my room,
Shivered and shook in the marble tomb,
Took the poker and found release
By prising the boards from the mantelpiece.
They fell away, piled up on the floor,
I walked to the passage and locked the door
Then peered on up through the chimney space
But all was dark in that soot-caked place.
I found in a cupboard a curtain rod
Which I poked up there, and began to prod,
When down with a rattle and caked with soot
There clattered the bones of a tiny foot.
And then some movement began up there
As weight was shifted, a tuft of hair,
Some ragged pants and a dirty shirt
And bones crashed down in the dust and dirt.
The skull fell out on the parquetry,
And lay there, looking on up at me,
My breath came out like a mist in there,
I'd solved the puzzle of Benjamin Clare!
He seemed to be grinning all over his face
Finally free from that dreadful place,
He'd long been stuck in that foetid air
Since the day that his father sent him there.
They'd paid him off, that I could see,
A house for his silence - Infamy!
Lord Gordon wasn't amused at all,
'The peasants will love it in Barkly Stile! '
'Why did you have to interfere?
You should have just left the blighter there,
He couldn't get out when it mattered most
And you can't light a fire, under a ghost! '
Two more bodies were found, at least
In the downstairs fireplace chimney-piece,
Another was buried just under the stair,
Suffocated, like Benjamin Clare.
I'm never invited to Stately Homes
Since the word passed round that I'd found old bones,
Their secrets are safe in the family plots
If I'm kept from their soot-caked chimneypots.
16 January 2009
poem by David Lewis Paget
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Evil Louie
Some say the state of texas
Could accommodate the entire human population
Five point six billion versions of the truth
Under one roof, some revelation
Tale a bit of this, give a bit of that
Put it in a blender, pull it out a hat
Theres no going back
Its a lie, its a fact
Has the cat got your tongue
Been too long in the sun
Theres dust on your tracks
Theres no going back
Come to think of its a load of monkeys
Every time you listen to your sun kissed lovers words
Evil louie is tomorrows sadness
Its a game of madness in a perfect world
Some would say french cuisines more appealing
Than a cold drink, burgers and fries
Some have said that a pillar of society
An upright citizens incapable of lust and crime
Tale a bit of this, give a bit of that
Put it in a blender, pull it out a hat
But he dont stand a change
With his pants around his ankles
Has the cat got your tongue
Been too long in the sun
Theres dust on your tracks
Theres no going back
song performed by by Deep Purple
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Shared Loneliness
A house is empty if you're alone.
Its rooms are too quiet for it's known
loneliness too, just like you.
It echoes with hollowness
and creaks with despair
for the lone figure it houses
has no one to share
its rooms.
It hears the steps of the solitary one.
It hears the sighs that weigh like a ton
on its floors and walls
where the sadness crawls.
It longs to be filled
with conversational tones
filling up its rooms.
The bedroom is lonely
and the living room too.
The kitchen has a setting for one
and only one cup of coffee to brew.
These rooms can house all of the pain
that lonesomeness brings and still remain
loyal to the one who's alone.
poem by Edwina Reizer
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Eternity Then..... (One Small Flicker)
eternity then,
one small flicker of the flame,
a comma in the book of life,
the point where roads meet,
and diverge...
a tiny shard of broken glass,
a dropp of sweat on the back of a worker,
ejaculation, and echo...
each vein of the leaf turning,
a stray dog's turd.
the creak of the wheel that needs geased,
the sound between the gunshot
and the thud of the body.
the moment just after the body is covered.
the whisper of an empty plate,
the marching order of the ants.
the silence when your lover walks out the door.
the color of the bent nail,
the wrinkle on the pillow.
the shout for peace no one hears,
the rattle of justice breaking chains.
the flap of wings when the bird lifts off.
the groan of the mountain stripped.
the funeral dirge of oil stricken fishes.
the turn of the key in the lock.
the sound of god's footsteps,
the mourning cry of the empty room.
the brush of hands when the spirit shudders,
the tremble of lips forgotten.
the collision of ending and beginning,
but a moment, memory, and dust!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Little Boy Blue
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and stanch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair,
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
"Now, don't you go till I come," he said,
"And don't you make any noise!"
So toddling off to his trundle-bed
He dreamed of the pretty toys.
And as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue,--
Oh, the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true.
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face.
And they wonder, as waiting these long years through,
In the dust of that little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put them there.
poem by Eugene Field
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Confessions
What is he buzzing in my ears?
"Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"
Ah, reverend sir, not I!
What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table's edge, -is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.
That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry
O'er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?
To mine, it serves for the old June weather
Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"
Is the house o'ertopping all.
At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
There watched for me, one June,
A girl; I know, sir, it's improper,
My poor mind's out of tune.
Only, there was a way... you crept
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
They styled their house "The Lodge".
What right had a lounger up their lane?
But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall's help, -their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to Oes,
Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether",
And stole from stair to stair,
And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
We loved, sir -used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was -
But then, how it was sweet!
poem by Robert Browning
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Ishmonie
The traveller tells how, in that ancient clime
Whose mystic monuments and ruins hoar
Still struggle with the antiquary's lore,
To guard the secrets of a by-gone time,
He saw, uprising from the desert bare,
Like a white ghost, a city of the dead,
With palaces and temples wondrous fair,
Where moon-horn'd Isis once was worshipped.
But silence, like a pall, did all enfold,
And the inhabitants were turn'd to stone --
Yea, stone the very heart of every one!
Once to a rich man I this tale re-told.
"Stone hearts! A traveller's myth!" -- he turn'd aside,
As Hunger begg'd, pale-featured and wild-eyed.
poem by Edward Booth Loughran
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A Memory Shall Flow
Into a melody, a memory shall flow
Guided by an echo, and, ever so slow
O're to the mountains, t'is dancing on a breeze
T'is the echo laughing with the trees.
Into the sky to the path of the unknown
A great many memories, o're the miles have flown
Remember an echo has a memory in tow
T'is yours for the picking, t'is yours to show.
Into an echo conducting its humble chores
When to look upon a memory is completely yours
Building a mountain of memories an echo's test
To pick from a tree, the memories I like best.
poem by M. Rene Riel
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The Old Man In The Canyon
I sought for Him on the whole roundity of the world,
On the stretched sand of the deserts, dusting the eyes,
Along the banks of the flowing hissing curvy rivers,
In the populated metropolitan cities, towns and villages,
On the green pastures, lush valleys and deep forests,
In the heaven kissing mountains of Himalayan ranges,
In the moonlit golden nights, in the silvery bright days,
Under the folds of darkness, in the feathers of light,
And enquired after Him from the tired weary mariners,
Who made lengthy voyages ransacking the seven seas;
But no footprint of Him was traced and depressed I sat.
Ah! One day wanderlust took me amid the Northern hills,
At the webbed opening of a subterranean dark cave,
And curiosity led me in and what I did see there, hark!
There in the murky, gloomy, dismal canyon I found,
A faintly breathing exhausted strengthless old man,
With overgrown, dishevelled and withering grey hair,
He had deep eyes covered with thick rough brows,
Profound wrinkles like furrows creased on his visage,
He wore tattered trousers, rend sleeveless dingy shirt,
On filthy dark skin of the body, his liquorice like bones,
Seemed to be wrapped with thickblack sheet of polythene,
His feet had slits, slots like dry parched surface of the land.
I jerked him and He sat with the tiresome movement,
As someone rises breaching ajar the stones of grave,
Looked staring at me as He recalled the memory back,
He brought a false, fake smile on the parched lips,
And to my question He responded, made me reply,
“The world is too cold to go out, I feel warm here,
I eat leaves, grass and lick dust when belly torments me,
Often take rain water or drink from the stagnant pools,
For half a century I have neither taken a bath,
Nor washed the face, my plight is worse than a beggar,
I am disappointed, depressed, pray to God for my death.”
He recounted his tale while the shining tears rolled down,
From both the corners of his eyes, and he began to sob.
I remained stunned, remembered that once He had been,
“Mr. Justice”; but now his breathing strengthless carcass.
poem by Muhammad Shanazar
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House Of Many Rooms
The sound of the clock ticking
How this old house creeps
Another storm tonight approaches
So restless I can't sleep
Dark filled big long rooms
Portrait of a lady in view
Corridor that never seems to end
From a distance I thought I seen you
House Of Many Rooms
The sound of heavy rain falling
Feelings sourround of another place
An oval mirror hangs on the wall
And there I thought I seen your face
The smell of wild flowers
A gentle breeze blows from outside
Heavy laced dark curtains
A vision of you before my eyes
House Of Many Rooms
poem by Suelynn Walters
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