You, parkland tree, now landed on
Neath, lain of we two, now
Who may not speak up but who listens!
Deep-rooted one, deep thou!
Love-birds, all, whilst that for their hearts
Does, a-flutter, resume
The avid clapper of one made glad
Does, leafy blown, assume.
Morning dressed me without asking what held my sleeves apart.
The doorway knew my measure long before I reached my height chart.
My shadow knew me as a silhouette without an umbrella stand.
Everyone forgot the hidden chassis never held in hand.
I laughed out loud, forgetting to keep my steps slow,
No one saw the clapper swing, yet everyone the bell go.
The ladder climbed the wall without knowing its frame.
While mirrors pressed each passing face to say its name.
The coat flopped without a hanger; shoes misplaced their feet.
Rain soaked the ground until the footprints felt complete.
White light forgot to tell the rainbow what colors to bring.
Clouds remember flying, never growing a feathered thing.
Perhaps the tree leans the way it senses something underground.
Perhaps the wind shoots upright when nothing can be found.
Silence remembers songs after voices wander on ~
Keeping the shape of someone, long after they've gone.
The blight of years left my flesh and fame in disarray.
It kept no diary of lost days, yet weathered the fray.
It stood there while I ordered my last à la carte.
Only then did my sleeves remember what held them apart.
How long can I wait in the blaze of the sun,
Before shadows drag me down from the height?
The stars are a choir, but they do not speak,
And the sea keeps knocking with a blind white fist.
I am held by the flame, yet I ache for the dark,
Where my bones know the cool and the silence is loud.
I have wrestled with angels whose tongues were of fire,
I have drunk from the well where the dusk must still rise.
Do not ask me the hour, for time has no hand,
It unravels like smoke through the teeth of the night.
My voice is a bell, but the clapper is gone,
Still it tolls in the marrow of my mind and my bones.
How long shall I wait with my back to the sun?
Till the earth calls me down with its patient green mouth,
And the worms write my name in their winding script—
Then perhaps I’ll return from the light to the dark,
Or perhaps I will burn into nothing at all.
I have been
A grain of sand
A wisp of froth
Above a wave and then gone.
I have been
A shark’s tooth,
A piece of azure glass,
The clapper of a bell,
The bill of a falcon,
A feather floating.
I have been
The sound of children,
A nail in the barn,
The snore of a pig.
I have been sky,
Day, even night
And the receding arc of the world.
I have been
The hazy light
From a street lamp
In a misty eve.
I have been
A mouse, a blade,
A comb.
I have been
The base of a jug
And the pin in a cushion.
I have been
A sail
And the wind,
The bow, the hull
And even the wake behind
Spreading out.
I have been
A star long ago
Burnt out
Whose light yet arrives
To us now
To lead us
To Be still
Talk,
Be still again
And remember love.
i'm whiskey beats outta country
jazz, too classic
old's city in LA
high damn
runnin up you like water
all most hiding skin
and overatures
lest i grieve through absurd
trist's with confi, daunting
clapper town
east block alter girls
choired saints lost frames
too paint
sorry bouts
runnin up like water's mam
The ice-cream parlor
is just across the road
from a small white clapper-board church.
I sit in a window seat,
watching the little town
and the sidewalk
as it moves people around,
thought-reading their directions,
as they go to, or come away
from predictable starts and arrivals.
Now the congregation is filing-out
of the narrow church door.
The pastor, has somehow
teleported himself,
to get up in front of them,
he shakes hands and pats backs,
knowing them all,
perhaps knowing too much
about some of them.
Kids are corralled quickly,
strapped into booster seats,
or marshaled across to this store
for ice-cream treats.
It's just a little township,
on a side-road to nowhere special.
The ice-cream is homemade and delicious.
I could trash-talk this hamlet,
these people, these families,
I am naturally cynical by nature,
but I am in love with them all,
and the ice-crem is always so good.
Don't Look Blind
The flowers I bought you are still in their vase
Dried out and dropping their petals like tears
The hours we wasted were never a waste
But now this house is as empty as the last 20 years
To love and have lost, not a question at all
Hopeful despair posing riddles, unmatched
This silence answers a never placed call
Rings like a bell with no clapper attached
I love you, I'm sorry, I'm coming undone
No consolation for my error of ways
Trapped in between the fire, and sun
The way out is through, the cure, the malaise
You'll always find what you're looking for
If you're always looking for what you find
You'll never lose what you don't have anymore
But if you should find it again, don't look blind
I think of my ancestors building you,
Tying and placing tree-trunks, like girders, in queue;
They constructed you, then, with stones,
Twisted, turned, criss-crossed, hung, dangled in zones;
Road bridge, railway bridge, gate bridge, bay bridge,
You resembled longest and tallest mountain ridge;
Clapper, beam, truss, arch… you became suspension,
Cantilever, cable-stay, movable, floating, and high-tension;
How fond designs you are in, today, like miracles,
Magic of marvelous magicians waiting for oracles...
Travelling from place to place, and meeting people,
You build up relationships from valleys to hill steeple;
Though, through you, communication is continually created,
Has communion betwixt hearts clemently elated?
Connecting, interacting, do you construct relations?
Beyond hills and cliffs and national foundation…
Socialization, cultural extension, and environs easy,
You’re sometimes breezy and other sleazy and queasy...
Cognition, senses, sensation, and sensitivity,
Once broken impulsively, aren’t you in vainly pity...???
15 March 202
Pen over paper
Over your body is a caper
Exhibits a clapper
Twists like a rapper
Rendition of a writer
Your style peps and ponder
Soup that heals not wither
Outshining like a saber
Unleash your power
Power of poetry... in you!
This year the farmers are celebrating
the greatest full moon harvest
they ever had in the past hundred years
with a special field they sowed
to be reaped before the arrival of winter,
in the meantime, off in the distance
the church bell rings by way of a clapper
who strikes the bell with a farmer's hammer
signaling to the villagers it's time for work
they all line up in procession
with grit and determination
with weather beaten faces
turned into rawhide skin,
with shovels over their shoulders
they march to the beets and to the yams
to the fields loaded with rich phosphorus deposits
that washes down from the hills into streams
that irrigate the crops into super giant
beets and yams the size of watermelons
just bulging out of the rich soil,
the farmers came to dig and dig.
They worked fast and furiously
to beat the first frost digging reaping
and piling up the yams and the beets
into several mountain peaks of yellows and purple
Her name was fancy Ann flapper Bell
they called her the bell of the ball
the story goes, she was a flapper
who married a clapper,
a fine banger of the bell.
Crooked Tooth Joy
When I was young and hadn't a care,
I once wished I had curly hair.
But now I see what would've been misery
for the valiant true who would've tried
but failed to love me.
At the crack of the clapper
before I don the Sunday best,
I run my fingers through the never-tresses.
I have no know of the fancy man’s soul,
but I've tasted the fear, that cold sweat,
hardening the heart and splitting the soul
of golden lads uncapped of spiral locks.
Crooked teeth at least tear meat.
So important ripping flesh from bone.
And two eyes are oh so fine,
but one'll do in a pinch.
The curse of the curl,
denied the affections of a homely girl,
seeks the flaxen sanctuary.
How fleeting the comforts of moment,
half-lifing into delusion.
Standing before the darkened mirror
the gray is fair, the wisp a shock.
Assuredly Luke and the locks are in collusion.
Out the door and off to church,
I welcome the morning light.
Leave me the vices of tradition.
The curly-haired damned? … the virtues of fashion.
Time steals from everyone,
but I had so little to lose.
well
at last
after delay
bell poem form is here
recognised as new poem type
and so give it a go, in shape and mode
remembering to add clangor
clapper
ding
In the country, we do not have city shine,
we have luster,
we have the glimmer of voles,
the fumes of turbid crawlers
under the slow burn of iridescent woods.
We who night-watch
see from sunken waters,
gather light from luminous cisterns.
We understand black;
how it sheens the clapper claw.
On the pitch of the concealed
a country ken leads us to a quickened vision,
we see as a horse sees
fleeing from a fire breathing barn.
"Clapper Rail, Condor,
Loggerhead Shrike and a lost,
Whooping Crane, rarer..."
"Stop!" "Did you make the chess team?"
"No, because I am too short."
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.