Uses For Wings - Variations From 'We Can Be Broken' & Other Discarded Poems
.
'It means so much that we can be broken.' - from an early poem,1978
For Tien Ho, departed,
and Michael R.
carving the empty space
of her leaving still
*
Here is a Presence beyond
illicit fires bearing witness
to evidence, remains of flight,
contrived escapes blocked by panes,
walls striped in ramming panic,
of ritual and a broken neck,
petrified wings placed in open
spaces they once could range.
*
I began
a bird flown down a chimney
dying in an empty house,
a hidden mountain valley,
night time fires upon surrounding
hills, moonshine stills signaling
flame warnings, bootleggers' silent
spirits conjuring drip by drip
metal and grain.
*
Here are uses for wings:
something returning,
or turning inward
eventually climbed,
rested upon,
or fallen to some chimney life.
*
Descending the hill in unplanned rehearsal
for what has become a destined association,
our mutual confession is invisibly drawn.
A ruined one-room church appears,
a cemetery plot weed-hidden behind this
once sentinel house long remote to men,
as present as God. My own presence is bound
to his who stands confounded now as three,
one above grave, one within it, and me
in between, one eye upon him, the other
upon sagging dirt where bones and a
ragged shirt share an unexpected
moment of veils confused in sunlight's
disarray of leaves, wood, of stone and
shadows frozen there, not breathing
for us all in unstoried astonishment.
Here horseflies feast.
Upon weathered stones
are only creases for once were
names, dates, even God's Word,
chiseled by a now unknown hand,
an impression only, one among many,
reduced to no plot but that of Providence
left to surmise swatting at Eucharistic
flies proving only flesh and only blood,
a flood of questions eventually exhaled,
and exhaling still, waiting beside
a white rock with wings,
ignoring fires,
leaning into changes.
*
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Our Mutual Confession Invisibly Drawn - Pentecostal Church Ruins
Descending the hill in unplanned rehearsal,
what has become a destined association,
our mutual confession is invisibly drawn.
A ruined one-room church appears,
a cemetery plot weed-hidden behind this
once sentinel house long remote to men and
as present as God, my own presence is bound
to his who stands confounded now as three,
one above grave, one within it, and me
in between, one eye upon him, the other
upon sagging dirt where bones and a
ragged shirt share an unexpected
moment of veils confused in sunlight's
disarray of leaves, wood, of stone and
shadows frozen there, not breathing
for us all in un-storied astonishment.
Here horseflies feast.
Upon weathered stones are
only creases where once were
names, dates, even God's Word,
chiseled by a now unknown hand,
an impression only, one among many,
reduced to no plot but that of Providence
left to surmise swatting at Eucharistic
flies proving only flesh and only blood,
a flood of questions eventually exhaled,
and exhaling still, waiting beside
a white rock with wings,
ignoring fires,
leaning into changes.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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That We Can Be Broken - A Bird Spirit Speaks Of Beginnings
.
Citizen! What have they done with all the air? - Victor Serge
1
I began
a bird flown down a chimney,
an empty house hidden in a
mountain valley, a night time
fire upon surrounding hills,
a moonshine still's signal flame,
a bootlegger's warning,
a silent spirit conjuring
drip by drip
metal and grain.
No blue fire therein.
Suddenly spun,
some beckoning thing
wings between night's crumbled
brick and rusted tin,
white rock and
a wide sky,
braced by
a
closed
encircling valley.
2
Here
is a Presence
beyond illicit fires
bearing witness to evidence found,
remains of flight, contrived escapes
stopped by panes,
walls striped in ramming panic,
of ritual and a broken neck,
petrified wings displaced.
Now remote is the open space
they once could range.
3
Descending the hill in unplanned rehearsal
for what has become a destined association,
our mutual confession is invisibly drawn.
A ruined one-room church appears,
a cemetery plot weed-hidden behind this
once sentinel house long remote to men and
as present as God, my own presence is bound
to his who stands confounded now as three,
one above grave, one within it, and me
in between, one eye upon him, the other
upon sagging dirt where bones and a
ragged shirt share an unexpected
moment of veils confused in sunlight's
disarray of leaves, wood, of stone and
shadows frozen there, not breathing
for us all in un-storied astonishment.
Here horseflies feast.
Upon weathered stones are
only creases where once were
names, dates, even God's Word,
chiseled by a now unknown hand,
an impression only, one among many,
reduced to no plot but that of Providence
left to surmise swatting at Eucharistic
flies proving only flesh and only blood,
a flood of questions eventually exhaled,
and exhaling still, waiting beside
a white rock with wings,
ignoring fires,
leaning into changes.
4
There are uses for wings -
thoughts,
ramming walls,
and panes,
earnest though
contrived escapes.
At first midnight in stillness,
wait.
A white rock,
wings,
a still,
ignorant fires,
illicit spirits
lean into changes.
5
In arms
we carried It
as one does
a child
yet it was
He who carried us,
both bird and man,
who cried
openly
on the way
for our presence
solid in his arms,
he who did not care
who saw his tears shed,
head down,
beneath spring blossoms,
living presences
within bestowing
strength,
order
from
stone and remnant wings.
6
How all this will turn.
I do not burn to know.
I only yearn here,
air and more,
of air now air
all the more
in sustained
moments
without height.
Something returns
or turns inward
that may be climbed
to rest upon
or fall again to
some chimney
life to be found,
itself a winged burden.
.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Two Poems, Remembering Barnardsville Days, Blue Ridge Mountains, North Carolina
1
Uses For Wings - Variations From 'We Can Be Broken' & Other Discarded Poems
'It means so much that we can be broken.' - from an early poem,1978
for Tien Ho, departed,
and Michael carving
the empty space
of her leaving still
*
Here is a Presence beyond
illicit fires bearing witness
to evidence, remains of flight,
contrived escapes blocked by panes,
walls striped in ramming panic,
of ritual and a broken neck,
petrified wings placed in open
spaces they once could range.
*
I began
a bird flown down a chimney
dying in an empty house,
a hidden mountain valley,
night time fires upon surrounding
hills, moonshine stills signaling
flame warnings, bootleggers' silent
spirits conjuring drip by drip
metal and grain.
*
Here are uses for wings:
something returning,
or turning inward
eventually climbed,
rested upon,
or fallen to some chimney life.
*
Descending the hill in unplanned rehearsal,
what has become a destined association,
our mutual confession is invisibly drawn.
A ruined one-room church appears,
a cemetery plot weed-hidden behind this
once sentinel house long remote to men,
as present as God. My own presence is bound
to his who stands confounded now as three,
one above grave, one within it, and me
in between, one eye upon him, the other
upon sagging dirt where bones and a
ragged shirt share an unexpected
moment of veils confused in sunlight's
disarray of leaves, wood, of stone and
shadows frozen there, not breathing
for us all in unstoried astonishment.
Here horseflies feast.
Upon weathered stones
are only creases for once were
names, dates, even God's Word,
chiseled by a now unknown hand,
an impression only, one among many,
reduced to no plot but that of Providence
left to surmise swatting at Eucharistic
flies proving only flesh and only blood,
a flood of questions eventually exhaled,
and exhaling still, waiting beside
a white rock with wings,
ignoring fires,
leaning into changes.
2
What Is Revealed Side-By-Side
....recalling Barnardsville days
in the Blue Ridge, North Carolina
1
Silent, side-by-side, reading.
An occasional 'hear this then. '
Read aloud, words, bread, jam;
familiar tarnished knives spreading;
wedding set, grandmother's, all hands
forget intent on feeding, reading to each
gathered mouth.
Heads nod agreement.
Backs of hands and books
as napkins. Smiles all
around.
2 - What Is Read Out Loud
Beneath witnessed wheels
dancing stars gather stones at dusk,
pockets fill climbing World Tree to
apogee
then downward turn,
stones flung low to dawn,
that largest sun stumbles
alone to blue, screaming,
I WANT A WOMAN
heat enough to reveal morning's dove-blind croon,
burnt crow, having no use for light, missing
a leg, perches hard against solar winds.
Sun's call, different as bird and star, discloses.
3
What is revealed:
the mouse in the hole who loves the hole.
how the serpent's tail shimmers when tossed
out the door -
BE GONE
how one has learned to shake the sheet,
the pants, the socks, the heel-worn boots
before the getting-into, the putting on,
for even a snake loves a warm bed,
a pillow for its head - found once a
skin shed on my flower patterned
pillowcase, fleecy lambs forever silently
bleat as the cloth thins slowly slowly
from head wear, dream wear
because I was once a sleeping man.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Unexpected Fire, A Son's Cycle
for my father,
Major Warren Falcon, Sr.
Of Childhood Lamenting - Song of Experience
Might I sing it then?
How many stones he hauled
Not bidden but rough forced
Hand by hand from coagulate soil,
A boy's red wagon rusting
Full of spilled tumble-stones -
Unyielding stars between the rows, silent.
Brooding father with
His hoe to weed or ridge
To row or brow to strike
Made of a boy a mule and plow
At Earth's farthest Edge
Too ill-tilled to nurture
But more to fracture.
Land and the boy turned by his
Father's bad blood to waste.
Both boy and corn obedient
To his And Greater Hand grew tall.
He hid there late summers in
Fateful stalks, grew small on
Shadowed afternoons reading of
Exiled, royal Odysseus and scores
More, native born and slave, driven
From homing soil beyond surf, beyond tall
Mountains and fragrances desert-walled.
He waited, a stone for a small boy's hand,
Or a God's, to haul him or throw,
But it was his father's.
I often stare now at my own to know the difference...
*
Adolescence - Praising.
Cleaning Fish On Good Friday,1966
Fate, then, heavy in a boy's hand
hoists dead weight to a nail on a tree.
His knife scores firm flesh yielding
beneath freshly limp gills - there is an
instrument made just for this, pincher-pliers
for catfish skin - he grips and tears,
uses his weight down-stripping smoothly
bare to such luscence little ribs of roseate flesh.
Only the overly large head, the ugly face
whiskered within gilded monstrance,
remain pure to form, thin-lipped and
mocking, restrained by depth pressures,
sustained on surface trash, dead things
that sink down it's treasures.
Tenderly sing, then, to a nail
a boy's blood catechism -
hands, minds, meant to be stained,
mercy's quality unstrained
neither by will nor gill.
Scavenging flocks gladly fill their
gullets inhaling entrails tossed
in supplicant bins.
In unison Gregorian they scream:
There is a nail for me
plain, a chorus of barks** -
splintered lips
punctuated surprise,
glossolalia of rivers
now given weight.
One can only will
praise to 'The End',
and spill, after pliers,
one's silken guts in offering.
**A catfish when brought to shore barks, a rasping, barking discharge of air.
*
Middle Age - Awareness of Mortality Sure
Our Mutual Confession
Descending the hill in unplanned rehearsal
for what has become a destined association,
our mutual confession is invisibly drawn.
A ruined one-room church appears,
a cemetery plot weed-hidden behind this
once sentinel house long remote to men and
as present as God, my own presence is bound
to his who stands confounded now as three,
one above grave, one within it, and me
in between, one eye upon him, the other
upon sagging dirt where bones and a
ragged shirt share an unexpected
moment of veils confused in sunlight's
disarray of leaves, wood, of stone and
shadows frozen there, not breathing
for us all in unstoried astonishment.
Here horseflies feast.
Upon weathered stones are
only creases where once were
names, dates, even God's Word,
chiseled by a now unknown hand,
an impression only, one among many,
reduced to no plot but that of Providence
left to surmise swatting at Eucharistic
flies proving only flesh and only blood,
a flood of questions eventually exhaled,
and exhaling still, waiting beside
a white rock with wings,
ignoring fire,
leaning into changes.
*
Middle-Age - Acceptance - Forgiveness
Repose Of Needles
For Sanju,
If you need to stand or lie
in the shade for awhile then
do so as farmers do, as does
my father who farms his despair
in hot sun then lays beneath
pines in cooler shade to rest,
to dream that activity between
dirt and sky means some lasting
thing in its doing even though
his ruined life cannot make
it right between clouds and
his obsession with weeds.
Between the garden and the
un-tilled woods he rests,
repose of needles and bark,
mid-day sun insisting its
question slowly. Night dawning
he at last in darkness stands
returned from day, a practical
vision of green shoots to come
from blistered hands.
Up hill to the colder house,
he wills himself to life enough,
speaks some words to wife,
arcs widely around silent wary
children and lives to be old.
His loss of memory leaves it
for others to forgive, to live on
in the rich rot of that ongoing
question which nurtures his
memory haltingly, gracefully, on.
Astonished, I have arrived at
love for him who hurt me most,
have learned to obey the odor
of decaying things compelling
hands to dirt. Within the dream
of staying, the tendril and the heart,
my aging body takes on my
father's form; I, too, like him,
am a farmer when I note how
it moves in its winding reach,
rooting, rising, giving horizon.
*
Reconciliation - Radiance:
Psalm
What can I bring to harvest but these
bruised hands, these cracked stones?
Praise to the fruit tree long untended
beneath mendicant stars.
A boy above, his Radio flyer** lightening full,
Reaches to me now en exilio, the farther flung.
Father, my most difficult, most diffident friend,
My most loving curse,
A strange and fragrant Grace arrives -
Look.
From unexpected fire
comes frail, brief blossoms.
*William Shakespeare
**Radio Flyer is a toy company, famous for it's red wagons.
The company opened in 1917, the year of my father's birth.
poem by Warren Falcon
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Octavio 3
'We pursue modernity
in her incessant metamorphoses
yet we never manage to trap her.
She always escapes:
each encounter ends in flight.
We embrace her and
she disappears
immediately:
it was just a little air.
It is the instant,
that bird that is everywhere
and nowhere.
We want to trap it alive
but it flaps its wings
and vanishes
in the form of a handful
of syllables.
We are left empty-handed.
Then the doors of perception open slightly
and the other time appears,
the real one we were searching for
without knowing it:
the present,
the presence.'
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Ruined Homestead
White birds, frightened from silver grass,
whose blood-rose breasts and wings are thrown
like petals settling down the pass,
flower the ruined homestead’s stone.
Rise from the fallen walls and scream,
crested, from the stark dead gum;
shatter the crystal of the morning’s dream
where I, across your landscape, come.
Roofless, the broken stonework frames
red arid hills, a valley where
the ghost-gums writhe like whitened flames
and desert-oaks droop their dark hair.
And when, in the crucible of the hills
the molten day has died, there stands
under the blaze of stars that fills
its night, a house not made with hands.
poem by Roland Robinson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Fallen, Empty, And Broken
fallen soldier
fallen sky
fallen angel
from on high
fallen heartache
fallen soul
fallen man
losing control
empty bed
empty arms
empty dreams
empty heart
empty wallet
empty hands
cant take nothin'
from an empty man
broken promises
broken vows
broken spirit
wont allow
broken fences
broken lives
broken tomorrows
broken nights
fallen, empty, and broken
every road is the same
bent, bruised, and shaken
still numb from the pain
now you dont answer
when i call out your name
fallen, empty, and broken
walking in the rain...
fallen, empty, and broken...
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Broken Wings
Broken wings
Broken wings
Twirls in ballroom gowns
Echos of glory
And reminders of things lost
Broken wings
Broken wings
Only feet to help carry on now
A thousand voices
Singing the same song
Broken wings
Broken wings
Feathers litter the ground
Where the proud used to stand
Where only broken wings remain
poem by Autumn Winds
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A Whole Galaxy Lights Up
A whole galaxy lights up for the sake of a single planet; for
the sake of a single flower, the entire earth turns itself
into a loom and weaves for a million years.
How many oceans have died to hang one dropp of water
at the tip of a blade of grass; and can you see in that blade
the untold dawns and sunsets that have risen and fallen like bread?
How many skies have bloomed and shed themselves
like the petals of blue roses
and how many birds have expired in their songs and wings
and fallen to earth like broken harps
to open up the space and voice within you? Have you
ever considered the endless generations of faces
that have come and gone, weeping themselves slowly into oblivion
like the crying glass of windows
just for the sake of one of your fleeting smiles;
or the billion nights that trembled in their dreams
for the colour of your eyes? And your blood
that is sweeter to you than any wine and floats
the boat of your heart down the rivers of its infinite flowing;
have you ever listened, deep within yourself, to the echo
of the hammers on the anvils of the aeons of volcanoes
that laboured like sacred smithies to pour and purify
all their skill and metal into your living iron? How are you not
in the least pore of your being
this miracle of so much? But tell me, you who can instantly travel
to the ends of the known universe and forever beyond
without leaving yourself, even
as you sit waiting for a bus, or brushing your hair;
what vastness of space and silence
has honed itself to a non-existent point
and entered like a gracious guest the tiny house of your bones and skin
and laid out all these thoughts and passions,
these clothes and jewels like gifts? And there
in the resplendency of the black mirror that illustrates your soul
and holds it up to you like the moon to the moon on midnight waters,
isn’t that the universe you’ve just pinned like a rose to your hair?
Beloved, I have lived ten thousand lifetimes
and discarded them like worn-out shoes,
fallen and risen from the dust of the road over and over again
just to make my way to this moment of you. Eternities have passed
and time itself has grown old and been forgotten
gods and civilizations, known and unknown
have worn away like stones like wildflowers since I first set
my vagrant heart on you, my every step, a grail, every breath,
Jerusalem, following you through the days and nights,
every sea, sky, and desert, your footprint, until I could bathe,
washed clean of myself and the journey
in the resurgent light of your beauty, that fountain
that has turned every atom of my being into a pilgrim
as if a million worlds went off in all directions like rays of light
or fingertips
to touch God’s face
as if they had raised a hand up to their own. Beloved,
where are you when I am so lost
everything looks like a strange home you once slept in for a night
and then abandoned, even the dishes, even the light,
even the small keys to your presence
you keep dropping everywhere like tears
that lock nothing in, nothing out; where are you now,
as I write this, longing for you, turning this beggar’s agony
into words that might rise like a glorious new constellation
full of grace and destiny
over the beautiful dark hills of your seeing
that are your eyes and the woods I wander in. Beloved,
I am your shadow; I am your ghost, coming and going from you
like a gate that yearns to be a wing
on any bird hurled, singing, into the dawn of your smile,
even if it be reflected on a windowpane. You, who are my life,
though a hair’s breadth seperate us, though
no more than the depth of the moon’s reflection keeps me
from drowning in your mysterious waters, I am nothing
but unheeded suffering outside your garden walls, nothing
but a phantom caravan in a desert of worlds outside
waiting to enter with gifts from a distant spirit
for the queen of the city. Beloved, look over your walls
like the moon walking its own heights
and gaze down upon the passion of my tents and fires
as if they were the flowers of the starfields
that snag in your veils of light, happily torn from their own shining
so might they adorn your passage. In your presence,
I am the mystic wind that wants to sport in your hair
and sweep through the valleys and along the curves of your body,
caressing every flute, shrine, and bell of your being
until all of you starts ringing, crazy with joy,
and all your leaves, all your secret lilies,
shudder silver side up in the sunlight after the storm.
Beloved, grant me freedom. Assent. Put an end
to the eloquence of this divine poverty
by blowing me out like a candle flame
that has danced on its own dying long enough. Without you
all my seeing and saying
is a rose and a word I’ve placed
on my own dejected coffin, drifting like an empty boat.
Beloved, open this door of darkness like the first crescent of the moon
and make an end of me in you as you have
so many stars and asylums and longings before me; let me
cross your threshold like a tide you have raised and sent
rushing up your slopes of life within, and when I am spent,
draw me back into yourself like a wave or a breath or a world,
or, deeper yet, this ocean of shoreless oceans that has swayed me into being
without beginning, end, or separation,
this extravagance in the form of the man who loves you.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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10.15 Saturday Night
10.15
Saturday night
And the tap drips
Under the strip light
And i'm sitting
In the kitchen sink
And the tap drips
Drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip
Waiting
For the telephone to ring
And i'm wondering
Where she's been
And i'm crying
For yesterday
And the tap drips
Drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip
It's always the same
song performed by by Cure
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Rise From The Ashes
Sent to the earth In the open light
White soul delivered out from the dark
Guardian of a pure heart, run in innocent blood
Owned the spirit like a young phoenix learn to fly
Underneath the skin it binds, fears existence denied
But when the sun loose it's crown at the dark night
Mist of fear shadowing all visible roads
Suffering without heat to breathe cold
Consuming air from this atmosphere
Holding soul in frozen blood, away from frozen heart
Taking over sanity to absorb all energy of living
Numb all the strength till wings lost the last flames
The glory now fade away soon to disappear
All broken, burned by this cold fear just in one night
And released spirit moved out as despaired soot
Force the soul to vapor above the ashes crude
Left the rest wait to collapse on the ground
Hopes estranged, decayed in the ashes
Purified soul levitates between the earth and the sky
Like a mass of white cotton, now it keeps growing
Filtering air to embrace all scattering black dust
The spirit particles, to not gone in black space
Emerge In anew constitution, an invisible union,
Unison for two, back as a whole one again
Sown by lightning, ties them together
In a mega black cloud above the ashes
A restoration of fearless,
Mission to save the life grace
A shiny drop, hit the ground
The purest ardor in the gem of soul
Return to the ashes as a brave dew
A spark was created, life ignited
Drizzle bring more, in every drip drop
Bring the heats, poured as the rain fall
Towering fires, Igniting sensation
Celebrating of new rising life
The return of the soul and spirit
For the heart lend the pulses again
Breathing confident
To raise the flamed wings again
Behind the limb
Like burning fires
Like a phoenix reclaim dreams
From lost life in earth and return again
After one more time delivered from dark
To seek the open light brighter than the sun rise
Cause after all what we found a lesson to be wise
..............................
poem by Unwritten Soul
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Happy New Year 5766
Happy New Year tsunami
Happy New Year hurricanes
Happy New Year earthquakes
Happy New Year floods
Happy New Year fires
Happy New Year whining tree-saws
Happy New Year broken oven
Happy New Year broken refridgerator
Happy New Year broken promises
Happy New Year working computer
Happy New Year screeching ears
Happy New Year wet windows parched garden
Happy New Year dripping tap
drip
drip
drip
Drip.
poem by Linda Hepner
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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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
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Angel with the Broken Wings
Angel fallen from sky,
Watching as life passed her by,
Filled with the worlds horrid things,
The angel with broken wings.
No one helps, no one prays,
For the girl who shows the black and grays,
Why does all the bad cling?
To the angel with the broken wings.
Sometimes she flies in her dreams,
But that doesn’t stop her screams,
When will they stop the sting?
For the angel with the broken wings.
One day this angel will fly above,
And fill the world with lots of love,
One day she’ll help to heal the dings,
In another angel with the broken wings.
poem by Belle Potter
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Seen in a Glass
Behind the tree, behind the house, behind the stars
In the presence that I cannot see
Otherwise than as house and stars and tree.
Tree, house and stars
Extend to infinity within themselves
Into the mystery of the world
Where whirl the wheels of power whose pulse beat
Out of nothing, out of night,
Leaves, stones and fires,
The living tree whose maypole dance
Of chromosome and nucleus
Traces the maze of boughs and leaves.
The standing house of stone that poured
In molten torrent when was hurled
Out of chaos this great world,
And suns whose kindling begins anew
Or ends the course that tree, house, world move through.
Upheld by being that I cannot know
In other form than stars and stones and trees
Assume in nature’s glass, in nature’s eyes.
poem by Kathleen Jessie Raine
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Rock In The Sea
Think of our blindness where the water burned!
Are we so certain that those wings, returned
And turning, we had half discerned
Before our dazzled eyes had surely seen
The bird aloft there, did not mean?—
Our hearts so seized upon the sign!
Think how we sailed up-wind, the brine
Tasting of daphne, the enormous wave
Thundering in the water cave—
Thunder in stone. And how we beached the skiff
And climbed the coral of that iron cliff
And found what only in our hearts we’d heard—
The silver screaming of that one, white bird:
The fabulous wings, the crimson beak
That opened, red as blood, to shriek
And clamor in that world of stone,
No voice to answer but its own.
What certainty, hidden in our hearts before,
Found in the bird its metaphor?
poem by Archibald MacLeish
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You Are The Empty...
i am the cross,
and i am the kiss...
i am the embrace,
and the parting stillness.
i am death falling from the trees,
i am eternity in the promise of snow.
i am the word spoken and heard,
slowly undressed with awe and hunger.
i am the tongue drawing history's face,
in every secret place, in every hidden treasure.
i am the fluid of love spillt with passion,
i am the touch, trembling and sure.
i am the shadow that lit the candle,
the shoe that fell to the floor.
i am the covered bridge,
and the sound of horses' hooves.
the screech of the owl,
the taunt of the moonlight.
i am the glass broken,
the panting of the darkness.
i am the chimney too long cold.
i am the name spoken in grunts,
the moan of the waves that cant find shore.
i am the wings that define the night,
you are the empty waiting to be filled!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Those moments
as you begin
you make decisions that end
a certain moment
something escapes like a bird from your hand
but that is what it is going to be
wings are always wings
and the hands and palms are but what you claim you have
there is a satisfaction
of flight for those destined to fly
in the same manner there is more to a home
as it is too destined to stay
there is no gauge to all these but the heart that sings
during those moments of cold rain
there is no point of return
for one who has finally decided to be just oneself
a home a sofa and a window that you close
because finally it is dark ....
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Sunset On The Bearcamp
A gold fringe on the purpling hem
Of hills the river runs,
As down its long, green valley falls
The last of summer's suns.
Along its tawny gravel-bed
Broad-flowing, swift, and still,
As if its meadow levels felt
The hurry of the hill,
Noiseless between its banks of green
From curve to curve it slips;
The drowsy maple-shadows rest
Like fingers on its lips.
A waif from Carroll's wildest hills,
Unstoried and unknown;
The ursine legend of its name
Prowls on its banks alone.
Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn
As ever Yarrow knew,
Or, under rainy Irish skies,
By Spenser's Mulla grew;
And through the gaps of leaning trees
Its mountain cradle shows
The gold against the amethyst,
The green against the rose.
Touched by a light that hath no name,
A glory never sung,
Aloft on sky and mountain wall
Are God's great pictures hung.
How changed the summits vast and old!
No longer granite-browed,
They melt in rosy mist; the rock
Is softer than the cloud;
The valley holds its breath; no leaf
Of all its elms is twirled
The silence of eternity
Seems falling on the world.
The pause before the breaking seals
Of mystery is this;
Yon miracle-play of night and day
Makes dumb its witnesses.
What unseen altar crowns the hills
That reach up stair on stair?
What eyes look through, what white wings fan
These purple veils of air?
What Presence from the heavenly heights
To those of earth stoops down?
Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods
On Ida's snowy crown!
Slow fades the vision of the sky,
The golden water pales,
And over all the valley-land
A gray-winged vapor sails.
I go the common way of all;
The sunset fires will burn,
The flowers will blow, the river flow,
When I no more return.
No whisper from the mountain pine
Nor lapsing stream shall tell
The stranger, treading where I tread,
Of him who loved them well.
But beauty seen is never lost,
God's colors all are fast;
The glory of this sunset heaven
Into my soul has passed,
A sense of gladness unconfined
To mortal date or clime;
As the soul liveth, it shall live
Beyond the years of time.
Beside the mystic asphodels
Shall bloom the home-born flowers,
And new horizons flush and glow
With sunset hues of ours.
Farewell! these smiling hills must wear
Too soon their wintry frown,
And snow-cold winds from off them shake
The maple's red leaves down.
But I shall see a summer sun
Still setting broad and low;
The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom,
The golden water flow.
A lover's claim is mine on all
I see to have and hold,--
The rose-light of perpetual hills,
And sunsets never cold!
poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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Chimney Smoke
My chimney smoke billows, streams and puffs,
Peacefully wafting o'er the bluffs,
Drifting further, merging with clouds,
That act as our blankets, our mantles, our shrouds.
O the good Earth is spinning around and around,
And the sun ever shines without making a sound,
And the hearth in my house is burning some wood,
Crackling and popping like a good fire should.
Yes we laughed and we cried and we had such a ball,
Was all of this something after all?
'I know not our strange plot, ' said the tired, old man,
Then returned to the spot where his whole life began.
Immense and stupendous with checkerboard floors,
We push forward like pawns down the long corridors,
Capturing pieces like killing machines,
Yearning to turn into quantum queens!
There's blood in the streets and there's blood in the fields,
There are bird-picked bones by the broken shields,
And the cycle continues forevermore,
Massacres, genocides, holocausts, war!
And when we look back at all that's been done,
In the name of survival, development, fun,
Will we try to correct the mistakes that were made?
Or live to regret them, forget them, and fade…
poem by Joshua Dinkin
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