Coarse Poems | Examples

Reverse Osmosis of Life

(“Corpus Callosum”, 2017, original encaustic)

Reverse Osmosis of Life

It’s a two way street
The way reality exists
Divided into truth on one side
And illusion’s delusions the other,
And yet the most fascinating aspect
Is the membrane that exists between the two
A membrane of I don’t know what,
But which I’m sure the ancients had a name for,
Which divides, insulates and yet connects 
And filters through cosmic osmosis
The personal and transpersonal,
Or you could say the mortal and immortal.

Sometimes I can feel the membrane at work
Seeing it even just beyond the limits of my mind’s eye
Knowing what it’s doing
As it transpires
Because I am in fact on both sides simultaneously
At least to some degree.
Everything after all is an extension 
And expression of Life,
You, me, us,
In whatever forms it finds us
From refined and subtle to coarse and gross.

The other night I dreamt of being a bridge
Not a figurative one, but literally
An object with girders and cross members
Able to span a stream or gully.
It didn’t surprise me, just intrigue me
That the creative nature of the Mind
Is what it is
And in fact, is all there is.

(8/18/25)

Rhythm of a River

Nette Onclaud, Rolling with the R’s, 8/4/2025

Rhythm of a River

rambling
   funny waters,
      downward rapidity
         of laughter on white water raft.
unintended coxswain gets rogue-wave kissed.
         guides directing, this way and that,
      up and down; rowers with
   coarse correction,
rambling.

Joy vs bliss

caged in a form in this domain
fleeting is joy as also pain
since we feel not one with the source 
thus are prone to struggle and strain

if we give up the use of force
discarding feral instincts coarse
befriending silence, love entwined
we read script of bliss penned in morse

head melds with heart, love aligned
one with oneness, the truth’s divined
bliss in permanence here to stay
all cravings of ego declined

making love and light our mainstay 
our heart emits a bliss sun ray 
being that flame we have become 
making earth life seem like mere play

beyond limit

these days I question more and more
        my faiths and what their purposed for
            while evil grows to breadths unseen
    beyond, it seems, where it has been

oh grant me sense and help me live
        with deep, dark things I can’t forgive
            those angers towards the culprits of
    coarse misdeeds done to those I love

hushed secrets banned from leaving lips
        that sink sweet souls and hearts like ships
            unblemished spirits stained and drowned
    by friends and folks with greed unbound

I’ve tried so hard through love to free
        those hates that seethe inside of me 
            but I’ve not now or e’er such sweep
    for sufferance that broad or deep

        so …

I’ll hand them up to grander strengths
        a Grace that knows no walls or lengths
            and pray that such is pardoned me …
    the wealth of wrongs … I’VE brought to be.

My Father's Instructions: Cooking Filet Mignon

Have it
At room 
Temperature
Before cooking.

No marinade.
Just coarse salt
And pepper.

Hot heavy pan
Medium to high heat.
Flip when seared.

Dark brown.
Lower heat.

Lotsa butter,
Mushrooms,
Chopped shallots,
Drops of 
Lee and Perrins.
Squirt of lemon &
Dash of parsley
At the end.

Have a warm plate.
Drop it all from the pan.
Keep plate 
On low warm.
Let it sit for 20min.

Tenderloin is delicate.

No title

A bond like ours is like a bud,
Innocent with no identity to mud or blood.
A bud is small and delicate,
It describes our bond as I dedicate.

A flower bud is fragile and vulnerable,
Giving our bond a name is unreliable.
A bud has full potential for growth,
So is our bond and must be nurtured by both.

Let's not rush our friendship to the unknown,
Rather let's allow it to be grown.
I do care about you, I do like you,
But it's not to the point where it turns into love.

The words you spew ,
Only you know if they are true.
I only asked for a good time,
And you gave me a dish of grime.

My tongue may be coarse,
I say words with no remorse .
I just want to know our course,
Because what we are doing looks like force.

Behold! God has a Sense of Humor!

“Ah! Ah!” cried Mr. Shaw, a museum man of science in 1799,
as he carefully unwrapped a specimen from New South Wales.
It was Labeled: "It's a weird one; Caught in a creek; Dug from a burrow with egg nest!"
Mr. Shaw’s heart thumped with suspicion of a prank or fraud, as he noted what he saw:
It had the webbed feet, a rubbery bill, and the eggs of a duck.
It had a wide flat beaver's tail and coarse thick brown fur. 
It had two snake-like fangs, on its hind legs, and small piggy eyes.
It suckled its young with milk, but no nipples were found.
Mr. Shaw looked hard, but found no traces of stitches, glue or bindings.
How can this be? How can this be real? How utterly bizarre?
"Ah! Ah! I know!" God, the creator, has a wicked sense of humor!
Behold! The duck-billed, flat-footed - Platypus!

I AM THE LIGHT WITHIN THE DARK-

I AM THE LIGHT WITHIN THE DARK  

On the course of life's highway;
I am walking to mine horizon;
In the witness I am smart;
I'm a walking to mine horizon;
I am the light, within the dark;
I am the heat, in the fire spark;
When noon nest loses in light;

Standing on the curb
In the witness I am smart;
I am righteously embarked;
 On the course of life's highway;
I am walking to mine horizon;
I am the heat, in the fire spark;
I am the light, within the dark;

PIDGIN(NIGERIAN)?for di coarse for life's highway;
i am walking to mine horizon;
for di witness i am smart;
i'm a walking to mine horizon;
i am di lait, for inside di dark;
i am di heat, for di faya spark;
wen noon nest looses for lait;

standing for di curb
for di witness i am smart;
i am righteously embarked;
 for di coarse for life's highway;
i am walking to mine horizon;
i am di heat, for di faya spark;
i am di lait, for inside di dark;

Give Me The Rhythm

Your whisper is in the burble of the spring stream.
You pass through the internodes like rays through a prism.
I have composed my lyrics. I would like to sing.
My morphemes are coarse. Could you give me your rhythm?

Aesthetics and passions amalgamate in me.
My soul finds solace in your consoling bosom.
Sentiments break within me, like waves of the sea.
Words move tunelessly. Could you give me your rhythm?

Mind and heart should be in tune, like a musical.
Compassion for creatures should be the sole dictum.
Shouldn't equilibrium be endless moral?
Castles of creeds crash. Could you give me your rhythm?

To begin and end each of my days with truism
Dear Mother Nature, could you give me your rhythm?

The Work Rotter

Spire insight of silence
Swotch and bind, conspiracy of mind
Conspire and self-protrude
Mindless matter of maddened hatter
Borne gall of uncongruent bladder
Reign wettened confections'n faux pas 
Pram embedded bedding of public propaganda 
And poised for prose 'dulted diaper thrown an' broiled'n a gutter
Homely homelessness in wake of deft arms 
Freshened refreshener and wetted choke 
Chugged and driven doomed deliverance 
Cut of word 'cross and lost'n devious drivings of work
Ticking tenor left fear to render
These haps to fall through ungloved metal and measly meak meal, and 
Coarse feel along rift ridged riverbays
Swept upon eons of words spurred affray
Sully gusts, and worry t'encrust
And collect the lost worker from astray.

Battle Scarred

No towel dries these stains
Dragon scales that pierce my soul
Hateful words that scorch my heart
Your reptilian heart
Stay hidden among strangers
Battle scarred by your coarse touch

tin cup music

tin cup music

life’s story was etched on her face
carved with pocket-knife memories
rubbed in with grammar school erasers
and colored like heavy wet fog
on a stinson beach winter’s morning
.
smiles were kept tucked in her pocket
until a coin rang out like handel’s messiah
hitting the bottom of her tin cup
a reminder of how far she had fallen
in a life written like a fourteen-line sonnet

 noise from darkened streets and shadowed corners
became comforting street sounds
as she curled in her coarse wool army blanket
now clutched to her chin and pushed by her toes
until she found sleep in her cocoon of warmth
.
then a little girl jumped on chalk-drawn squares
skipped rope and laughed while running into the wind
and peeking around corners in games of hide and seek
oh, she chased her puppy and hugged her kitten
in dreams constructed with yesterday’s pieces

awakened, she wondered when she last cried
tears no longer fell easily
and the gurgling complaints in her belly
reminded her that morning erased dreams 
as easily as dreams erased the pain of living

tolbert

A Poet’s Lines Not Bright Enough

Goth mood’s not right, not bright enough.
Fountain of sea, rapt in darkness.
Crepuscular ink blocks sunlight.
The cursive waves doth strain the wrist.

Fa-la-la rhymes, leaping and lowing.
Counting the black sheep - times not slowing.

Fountain of sea, deep in darkness.
Coarse keys, ivory black, musing.
The cursive waves doth strain the wrist.
Resist of playful sounds - thirsting.

Fa-la-la rhymes, leaping and lowing.
Counting the black sheep - times not slowing.

Coarse keys, ivory black, musing,
and refusing to budge - lines spurn.
Resist of playful sounds - thirsting.
The burn hisses and squeals; smudges.

Fa-la-la rhymes, leaping and lowing.
Counting the black sheep - times not slowing.

And refusing to budge, lines spurn.
Crepuscular ink blocks sunlight.
The burn hisses and squeals; smudges.
Goth mood’s not right, not bright enough.

Reflections of the Past, Visions of the Future: A Traveller Arrives in Arezzo

The sun on this September afternoon
is not quite what it might have been in June,
but hot enough. My barman’s chatting on,
while somewhere, some lopsided carillon
is clanging tunelessly. I’m in the square
of San Francesco in Arezzo, where
I’ve longed to be for years. Rome’s far behind
(in fact it’s hard to summon Rome to mind,
albeit I was there not long ago.)
Tranquillity! I almost feel as though
I’ve plunged in freezing water. And the sight
of fiesta flags, inflamed by evening light
can make the heart start pumping. It’s too late
(for me) to learn to free-associate,
but what feels right, is right. I’m in a groove,
and who can say if I will ever move
from this precise position? Favourite pen,
a fine coarse notebook and “remember when” …
can life improve on this? When things combine,
we feel we’ve touched the hem of The Divine:
perhaps I’m heading for a nuclear fall,
but sunlight slanting on that craggy wall
is just as good as (better than, perhaps)
a coffee in that place from “Google Maps”.
Until I found Palazzo Guillichini
Gregorio, life’s classic “in-betweeny”
was lost to me: but I, “traquer le lièvre”,
can get the story from the cause célèbre.

Dog of war

You bury your only dog beneath a home of desecrated poppies.
Pup frozen from years of neglect, full of ignorance and stained of regret.
You claw at the dirt like one of the far-gone soldiers, and the earth knows better but to serve you.

You lay his body down Heavy, limp and soundless.
His wide eyes the color of heartbreak and broken promises, his coarse fur kissed by the signs of war.
You wear the same marks, you have the same saintless past,
But your fate is not the same.

War was your mother; she taught you learn once, not twice. She taught you dogs die and you were reborn by your own hand, born with thorns for skin and poison in your breath.

Dog and Human,
Killed and killer,

One was inhuman the other was a self-created monster.
There is a fear on the dog's face that you can only dream of. Pure light consumed by the darkness. a child of war, taken by a river of blood and the fear that led to his death. 

And you wish you had the humanity to grieve.

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