Best Whitely Poems
October: I'm eighteen, shortcutting home
through an autumn-burnished churchyard -
copper-lustred leaves, moss-skinned stone -
a jaunty swing of skater skirt and arm,
college folder square-sturdy in my hand.
In the moment. In the last pale pulse of sun.
Hey, can you tell me...?
I halt. I turn...
Cold earth. Colder blade dimpling my skin.
My coral cameo earrings scatter,
daisy-dotting the green.
My back is spiked by needles of yews.
Sun skews, sky side-slides
until his face is the firmament.
I'm staring into the tumid blank-bloat of blue;
the ground hardening beneath me,
the death-spike trees stiffening.
Heavy Special Brew breaths.
Grubby, moist fingers
like grubs crawling over my breasts,
and, weirdly, I'm smelling pepper -
horror-spice of pungent lust,
its acrid nose-thrust -
and woodsmoke is drifting from somewhere...
lung-flame, tongue-flames
of searing words - his words -
blazing like the umber tumbling leaves.
Please...Please...I'll...
Fear-forced bargaining, but I'm beyond care.
And I'm aware
of the church steeple rising,
its phallus penetrating sky.
The tilting church could topple
as tears crystal-crush in my eyes.
Fear-faint, already half gone
in a soundless scream, my muted mouth
mouths silent goodbyes
to Sarah, to Mum.
Time slows to a crawl.
I try to call. Nobody comes
but the man who has me ground-pinned.
Bleachy stink of semen
whitening my ripped skater skirt,
but some things don't fade
and there is no clean in this, just dirt,
wet leaf-mulch, shame.
Ineradicable hurt.
Sacred soil is soiled, sullied.
Stunned, I stumble
shoeless, knickerless,
into the trees and heave
into the mud, into the leaves
strings of spittle-sick,
my thoughts strung out,
reality spun out.
From stinking, pulped leaves I retrieve
crushed coral earrings,
ground-grimy knickers,
my white court shoes
that whitely scream the 90s,
the scattered tatters of essays -
white, like fallen feathers, sunk in the sludge,
muddied, the red-inked words bloodied.
I gather them together.
Gather myself.
I go
forward into my future, stained from pain
and tainted touch, the smears of fear, self-disgust.
And oozing slime-soft into my ears
the mire of incongruous apology: I'm sorry
don't tell anyone - I won't.
I don't.
"Blue Dress"
Temptation
Green as an
Apple
Blue
into the arms
of Hell
Red
"LIFE"
Read
the bite of an Apple
Stopped me short
and
YOU,
despite
all
Yellow Brick Road
Tornadoes
Stood by me
Silent, still, strong and
eloquent
Where is Love sung?
Love is sung
in the
Blue Notes
Dressed in Blue
The letters of a spell
undressed and unravelled
covert under cover
Manifestation sings softly
as you turn over
Jade eyes reflecting
Green four leaf clovers
floating deep in
Secret Oceans of Blue
"Where Do I Belong?"
The Key is held
on a tongue
passed with a dream,
on Mid Summer Night's
Jubilee kiss
from Forest of Arden
MAGIC.
The key is passed
through the Daemon's
Mirrors -
HOME.
(LadyLabyrinth/2019)
Into Temptation / Crowded House
https://youtu.be/fSa1o_vT0EI
1. Brett Whitely
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Whiteley
2. Brett Whitely Studio
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/brett-whiteley-studio/
3. Lyrics: Into Temptation / Crowded House
https://genius.com/Crowded-house-into-temptation-lyrics
4. Daemon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(classical_mythology)
Hot zones of danger,
dark places
where dense hearts go
Hearts that are cold as ice
Roll the dice ...
take a chance on fatal corona exploration
Go ghetto orbital
and gamble with your porcelain life
You’ve been whitely warned:
Shun the spots —
the darkside of the Helios shadows,
where the sun don’t golden glow
It’s best to yield to your coin conscience;
the fade-to-black pulse
of the societal dusk, dimming yellow
Go colonial orbital,
where the cloudless reign
of oppression is rife
And the gravity of poverty
is sol cranial heavy
Irradiated cries cuts through
the poisoned atmosphere of hatred
like a serrated knife
You’ve been white noise warned:
Danger!
Avoid the riotous flares of destruction ...
hot spots,
where obstruction of justice flow
Shun the leper spots
of the volatile igneous rock dimming yellow
Those event horizon spaces —
ephemeral stardust places
that were polarity flux created not to burn slow
5-11-21
Colour hides in a whitely glow
every colour we’ve ever known
Reflective rays a spectrum show
Coloured days, names and numbers
See the world through coloured wonders.
Think in colour, don’t you?
Your name clearly blue
Synaesthesia your my life
Colouring my every thought
Spectrum white and every sort
Close my eyes and you are there
Years of coloured thoughts to share.
roots hoarding stored sap
stick fingered rhodedandrons
Color whitely hid
Dog Star
The clarity with which youthful vision perceives the world
Is increasingly fogged by the successive days of life.
Simple magnanimity is replaced by complex reservation.
Knowledge is replaced by uncertainty.
Hope is replaced by the leaden awareness of the cold laws of chance, and of time’s passage,
By the degeneration of familiar forms,
By the merciless reaping of the best in human spirit:
Gazing upon the heavens and the deep stillness of those constant lights,
Searching course of purpose lack; unsettled certainty, brain benumbing.
Castor and Pollux, lucid pilot stars, begin to calm the fever of my blood,
Settling upon me a vision of a mystic green and silver thread that links existence round.
And yet, sadness when sylphs withdraw, and Ariel weeping for Belinda flies,
And Umbriel, a dusky melancholy sprite, as ever sullies the fair face of night...
Down to central earth, the realm of rocky truth.
Repairing to search the gloomy, yet whitely glowing, cave
Where, sharp-witted and dull-eyed, a god,
Ankle deep in sterile and lifeless mud,
Moved in a rhythm perfect to reason.
Yet delicately astray to hope;
Separate from all the golden harmonies
Ordained by the measure of bowel and heart;
Machined cortex, sailing through gaunchious deeps, unimaginable heights,
Built step upon step; Cheops’ pyramid a fly speck by comparison.
Still unknown, unnoticed, the green and silver thread......
Unbend the substantial back, honest god!
Upward cant the neck!
Toil not; drink green and silver wine as the Dog star rules!
(The cricket sounds sweetly from the leaves and the jonquil blows softly.)
Cant the neck! Observe….
Phantasm swimming in space,
Covered all over with visible power and beauty.
Green and silver interlaced, the whole its parts beminifies.
Endemion, Diana, and Pan ooze from mesh of mass and law as limpid condensements on cold granite:
Man’s lonely vigil, a warmth that lifts magic… creates,
Imbedding blue-green strands.
Reason fails; life begins!
With a heavy heart we pray
Please keep death away
The skies are all grey
Does it matter what we say
God only takes the best
And guides them to His nest
To fulfil their brand new quest
Beautiful angels whitely dressed
God, hear us now
We beg, please don’t allow
We plead for health somehow
It’s not time for that final bow
Place Your hand to heal
We pray and we kneel
We can’t make that deal
We know You will reveal
With a heavy heart we cry
It is not time to say good bye
We look past mountains high
You are always nearby
I stumble and fall
I am not strong
I need help when I crawl
My road is uphill and long
Sunshine or rain
The struggle is real
Sometimes I need a cane
Just need to make a deal
God sent with love
Angels whitely dressed
pure as the peace dove
I don’t need to be stressed
Guiding me on a road
From Micheal to Crystal
I need not to carry that load
All I need to do is ask and be still
Tomorrow I'll see flowers white and I will dance with butterflies,
On grass uncut between my knees. They'll call me pal and gladly I,
Will love them back. The smell of yarrows will refill the empty sky,
While their white blooms will coruscate both on the grass and in my eyes.
Tomorrow I will sing again. I wonder what will butterflies,
Prefer when it will come to music. I will sing while they will flap,
Their whitely purple wings. And yarrows with their flowers white will clap,
So I imagine even worms will have to wake up from despise.
Tomorrow I will feel again inside my soul the butterflies,
As if they are still juvenile. They'll pick my soul and fly up high,
To clouds where yarrows bloom. Those yarrows that caress my inner eye,
Will hold my soul and butterflies there in the transcendental skies.
Tomorrow I will have to wake up when my skin will meet sunrise,
And then again I'll say: »Tomorrow I will dance with butterflies!«
Lauren became paralysed suddenly overnight,
When she developed firm transverse myelitis,
An inflammation of the spinal cord, a huge fright,
Which gave no feeling chest down, a mantis.
Born 24 April 1998, she comes from Birmingham,
In Bromsgrove District in the area Cotton Hackett,
Where she sat her A-levels which got her a gram,
At Oxford Brookes Uni as a law undergraduate.
Originally a wheelchair racer with many medals,
At the junior level for sprinting and distance middle,
She’s now in trunk and arms mixed double sculls,
Coupling with Laurence Whitely to warmly griddle.
Lauren only began the sport of rowing in 2015,
And rose through the ranks with speed and creed,
In 2015 in France the pair won silver real clean,
And in Rio they rowed to gold at tremendous speed.
A Kind of Winter
Never to see you turn and smile
or smell your rain-wet hair
or feel your hand or hear your voice
or look into your heart-full eyes
or hold you when you cry
'til Sun and laughter come again
is a kind of Winter,
as now when city, meadow, river field
are numb with cold and lashed by rain
that bends us in rebuke
of our too prodigal Spring.
But Sun and Spring will come again
painting trees and flowers, grass and sky
green yellow red and blue
and water freed from snow will dance
seaward through the clover fields
past celebrating birds to sunlit shore
where my wildly beating heart
searching horizons of blue sky
someday may see your homeward sail
sparkling whitely at farthest edge
of the infinite blue-green, dancing sea.
Quote by: Mystic Rose
When imagination flies like a wingeth butterfly of joy
towards the ladder of hope, inside a deep blue sky,
I am there, I am there, ... I am everywhere !
Climb me to the stars my friend
so my silver dollar eyes can feast on light
Ascend me to the moon and let me watch assurgent blues
sweet mingle with the puffy whitely clouds;
Like the birds in the sky that soar higher than the peeks
like the eagle that rises unshackled, by earth's re-forge
climb me to the heavens in one single breath ...
like all the beautiful things born of wings
Help me mount God's Kingdom of Love,
and it is there that you will find me,
I will be there, I will be there, I will be everywhere !
August 19 2022/b>
Foam whitely seethed, stirred up by surf
While sun beat down upon hot sand
And there, a way’s, a couple lounged
In folding chairs set side-by-side,
Umbrella flapped, it cast its shade,
When up the strand two ladies trekked,
Bikinis bright and teeny, tight,
Man’s face, alert,
With eyes joined them:
From where she sat,
Rebuked woman,
Hand tugged his chin,
Imploring stop!
His finger rose,
Her chair, she left
To point their way.
“So what?” he shrugged,
Both feet he found,
Her back, she turned,
His arms went cross
And head leaned in,
The shifting breeze
With anger filled—
She stooped and grabbed her canvas tote
And swiftly marched past swaying grass,
Retreating well behind the dune;
Umbrella sagging, chairs turned flat,
The jilted man, he struggled, stormed:
He made the dune and plodded on
While surf roared in, and foam seethed white.
March 2, 2017
Lover’s Quarrel Poetry Contest
Lewis Raynes, Sponsor
salt spray lingers in on shore wind
shivers threaten in late summer sun
wet sand sinks to cool hot soles
as toes tingle in filling holes
sea grass swirls in tidal current
brushstrokes crosshatching
in three dimensional canvas
a half shell flickers in refracted sunlight
rainbow flashes tease a hungry scup
To dart away in discontent
The jetty glistens in green slime
while the rocks in their white dryness
spatter with drops from passing wakes
gulls wheel and dance intricate loops
effortlessly filling the misty air
flying in every direction without touching each other
One stands on the highest spot
Looking bored and above all this activity
an occasional cloud forms to drift whitely
before dissipating in summer heat
All of this and none of this happened
in the lazy mind of one ethereal poet
to entertain another for the joy
Forever, comes to mind and peaks where the snow stays.
James Galvin
From the mountain that seemed to rise straight up
at the end of the city street´s racket, its heat
and black- laced carbon, a wedge of snow
lodged in a ravine:
White as a skull chunk, but,
as the right clock might
--giving the wrong time--white
as this morning´ milk.
And then, this evening, from our bedroom window,
I swear, you could see it whitely pulsing,
still holding all the day´s light in
--would not give it up--
white as a bleached brain
scrubbed of all thought,
of what this white paper might be
but for being marred by thought.