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Best Poems Written by Jim Marshal

Below are the all-time best Jim Marshal poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Raspberry Wine

Musty antiquity 
within.
Spice inside
a cauldron 
of ripe reason. 
Five months 
unshelved 
brewing boiling 
now the suave coolness,
animals don’t know
how to simmer their lovebroth
like this.

Only the Titan breath, what they desired remained. 

The world was dark, centralised 
spherical
the centre imposed
upon her perfect
cheekbones
his horned chest 
woolen jumper swollen with clues
breasts rising like meringues in a brick oven 
on her lips hung her whole life 
he extracted from her lips 
what he knew she was 
dying to give.

Ambience, randomosity, the
haze of a lantern
stage-lit movement in dust
eyes swivelled, bottles made
their pleas to be known
wise ancestral spirits

The gallery browsed.

Time stuck
between the molars. 

Abandoned corner;
hazelnut liquer, pomegranate
blood and something else.
They sat on the ground 

with this raspberry wine 
and sipped each other 
profoundly, irrevocably. 
She, mineral rich
rivulets of stone-clean water, 
soft aquamarine. He, present
like limestone
crumbling to a silent past,
frictitious, only lovers perch
on the cracked mantle 
of reality like this,
only they hear the moment's plea 
for recognition.

Copyright. 2009.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2009



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All Through Tuscany

The afternoon outlined. The sunny strokes
of a samurai blade on her body
revealing things the eyes feign see.
Tempted, wounded, the virgin parchment floats
between her skin and satin cloak.
Artist; afternoon, craving company
draws her inside-out so innocently,
on purpose leaves the yolk indwelling.

The painter in the corner moans,
he jealous of the afternoons artly
sensual oration.
Improving skin, bare olive tones
of subtle pastel, the moment partly lost
to the constellations.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2010

Details | Jim Marshal Poem

Death of a Romantic

The bees buzzed as they always did
and storms receded.
Silence hushed itself inside a shell.
Jackrabbits hopped away from hell
still intoxicated.

The village swarmed with threats.
Honest men could no longer 
make their way. Poets payed 
their debts for being who they were;
blessed, and afraid.

Wives bled, chasing phantoms in the 
snow. "Art's no consolation."
Husbands crept along their spikes
of faithlessness. Rabbits left.
High in space their conscience burrows.

He drags along his skinny guest;
terrific, bleeding & uncouth.
Mercy equates with Obesity -
"Let me bulge and burst my longing!
Make me fatter than the fattest Truth."

A woman yelps, "I like a good romantic"
and so she laughs and feigns forget.
"Be like the constant nights of snow."
But when the orchards raze themselves to bone -
he pays attention to her neglect. 

Ponies stall. Apollo's thief was 
phony. Hope is tall and all his
hollow follies, "Entertain the queen!"
somehow like a burning house afloat
with sediment & gasoline.

_"Is all my life in vain? The puppets
with their masquerading calls -
do they see me, twisting nettle,
knucklecutted at midnight, precious,
unseen like a fete with no stall?"_

"Ah, but you've met in Life's divining mirror
the very ladder of your beauty's fall.
Yet still in abstinence, still in nothingness 
along the ridge of this exquisite loneliness -
crawl."

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2009

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Raindrop Haiku

On the balcony ledge
   a raindrop explodes
followed by another.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2010

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The Mandala With the Nipple At the Centre

Grogged, split into holographic shards:
Hypnogog reveleations reflect
One dreary dreamer. Divinity
staggers to recall Itself
in matter.

Is God like peppermint? I think him

more like meade caressing 
a breeze – just beyond 
the fresh whore.

Bands of succulence
orbit a soaked mind.

The mandala, stony gravel out-stations
brilliantly placed in the Logic, 
oddly so.

In the centre the most divine Creation.

The nipple more proud than unassuming
more mirage-producing
than drought.

And all around the nipple children skip
chasing fairies in the smoky glow.

All around the nipple dance children, go.
More ancient than childbirth. The cheek

of Isis swirls itself into a Promise. Food
was later, grown men (and women) don’t know.

The milk erodes its own palace. The screen
remains; like the silence in a scream.

Art only, ever in the making. The sacredness
of a breast more than Nature produces.

Some on the outer, independent scriptute.
Some more honest, after some lost inner elixir.

I say: the world would not last long without a breast.

Copyright. 2009. JLM.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2009



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Social Cholesterol

Social artery.
A strong personality
sits like a blood clot.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2010

Details | Jim Marshal Poem

I Sat Beside a Dead Fox

river. gold
liquidcopper sheen & skypulp
mashed upon fatrocked banks 
refracted beams;
reflections.
The kid squeal.
The rowers chirp "hello"
[multiple oar-chasm] we bridge it
with a languid arm-sigh tooing, no fro. Yes, 
the 20th century is over,
and the "Water-Noodle" 
has arrived.

Time works different out here.

The national spine
doesn't belong
to a book. No. Hold land
in check,
meaty planes 
sewed onto bone.

Through the
geothermal corridors
where karadji's file into rooms
discussing the hunt

laymen like me
listen in
on dragonfly wings.

Cherubs 
land.... "Mum, you're an old fart!"
snorty laughs
splashy goodness
erections stay
low. Kookaburras 
slot into. Their laugh 
lingers like a
splinter in my throat

and I don't follow.

Family's an ascending arc
orbiting 
this chubby orphan
(he is all sickle,
shaped like a question mark.)

Re-arrangements.
"I want to see if the wombat's home!"
He's a dad alright, his salt 'n' pepper laugh more convincing
than George Clooney. Paper grows inside us
in wet reams.

It's all an odd proud thing, this lick of space.

The noise retreats, my heady sight dangles. Dizzy
eyeball flesh in quicksand vaguely mired. 
A bordered scene:
a symmety of Mates bathing in
coy homophobia
their gargantuan cocks
reaching so far 
to touch each other! Forbidden
to break the old pattern.

This goldpan face persists. Is life a Saturation?
Moist is good I like moist. Hairline dwellers
polite oracles.
My feet naked next 
to cigarette butts & weed
the tethering of a slight libido
a moist amulet hangs like a beard;
sophisticated mist from the muddy cauldron.

Copyright. 2009.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2009

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Three Poppies

Nothing seems to prepare
the field of dandelions
for three red poppies.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2010

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Rolling Back To Moss

It is a peculiarity of Love’s mossy light
that once, hapless rocks drowning in their days
would be overthrown by Love’s destructive plight
and smooth-whiskered words its song to soothe
in the belly of the whale its secrets brew.

In the aftermath of glow the pilgrims kneel
counting the bars of its serenading calm
as fire, trapped by beauty, mistakes its zeal
for something more than willing victims choose
and fans condemn themselves to breeze.

It’s nothing, but its something, and tired hope
endures, cradling every Cupid with a wish.
The vapours thin exposing every dusty mote
and pretend or not, all hearts will sometimes need
the mercy of their first and final love, never dimmed.

A visit, spectral angels cavaliering through the night
bringing blessings not condemned to wane,
flowers falling in love with their own petalled sight
bearing fragrance not descriptive like a name,
all that’s true would only call itself “Increase”.

The spring is fine as nectar to the flower brings
though all condensed and jealous of the Fall,
epic time is taken so all Eternity can sing
and clip the butterfly into shapes more lovely -
what delicate work! When love begins it’s sigh

far from where it once stood burning, a lush
constraint remains where freedom’s glove is lost
walking down its harbour, past the moveless thrush
and the crow all dead from drought, the rain will cease
and Love will change to tear, rolling back to moss.

The painter wild, the poet crazed all beyond his grasp,
what jealous combination, what charisma!
That together in a different stage marriage would outlast
the spikes and needles of despairing dim machinery
driving metal into hearts of soft enigma.

Seasons turn and all that makes us sober stays
safely tucked inside Betrayal’s chamber;
Reason roots itself in the soil of Love’s eternal fun.
Its sharp and pearly fingers, shaded from all danger,
can grant us mooned medallions to reflect the Sun.

The devil goes, the angel stays around in secret
ringed in haloed words of beauty’s whispered tale.
The two, not permitted by circumstantial thrall
to enter communion’s sweet redeeming place…. 
Love supports itself to fail, just to rise above it all.

Copyright. 2009. JLM.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2009

Details | Jim Marshal Poem

Fertility

Fertility, excess,
I know in me the whole seed process of everything
enlightening the sun to new distances.

  and I am famished for attention.
  and the conditions are still not right.
  still you blame me for

my lack of demand - "Go Make The Conditions" -

  but alas, I cannot. I am a man
  but (will you ever believe me?)
  Fertility 

is what I am. Not who, but what.

Copyright © Jim Marshal | Year Posted 2010


Book: Reflection on the Important Things