Feathering Poems | Examples

Hand on your shoulder

Hand on your shoulder- by Dominique Smith 

Hi, whom are talking to? The cold reality pull you back. Hey? Whered you go? Whomsoever is there is no longer a feeling. Tight shadows in your cold corner, the feathering flicking lights of trust have been drained. The wires are exposed and unsafe, the water of tears can help electrocute you. 

Falling failing flattened on the pavement, Hey? There you are. Wake up, what are you doing out here. Forest lit by fire flies, no memories have felt so enlarged, time goes on the weather is no longer a factor. Stop being stupid and get up off the ground, stop calling me stupid! Whome are you talking to? The humidity has you in a chokehold, the warm bath you slip into is a huge relief.

 Come on, Lets go home. But I am home, No our home. Ok , lets go. WAITE!! NO!! what the hell is wrong with you?! I was going home.... No you're not! Youre going to the building with help and hope, No! Im not! Im going home! Look me in my eye, ok. Are there any hands on my shoulders? No. Then you fooled her again. Because you told the truth, the only hands i see are on my shoulders and they would never leave me no matter what or who.

STOP

Pundits preachers politicians
you may see
attorneys too
and even agree with me
I think you'll find
all have an agenda
with an axe to grind
lining their pockets
feathering their nest
keeping their cards
close to the chest
saying one thing
doing another
I'd take 'em out and shoot 'em
if I had my druthers
and then there's censorship 
where one man's word rules the roost
to remain silent would be
a gag order self-induced
Bricusse and Newley had it right
when they wisely wrote
'Stop the world, I want to get off!'
a verbatim quote

better together

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(PoetrySoup Format)
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. . . when days hold doubt,   distracting with distance,
and feathering through darkness has become a challenge
~  remember me dear friend,
                   and   these moments  t r u e  ~

   because   we are     b e t t e r 
                                             together
         
              ---------------------------
               
              sunshine with smiles, 
         they lift me while lifting you


                      ---------------


                      simple thoughts from the heart
   * friendship grows stronger, when helpful and honest *

The Halfway Glass

A city block vendor chimes pleasantries prouder
than Muzak or an unseen crow in the background 
elevating alarm clock music in the caws
uncredited and angrily growing louder.

A walkway narrows between the vendor
and a building. I teeter between both
as I pass by her grill
parked beside the vape shop. A blistering warmth

whitens piled pink hotdogs and tickles my ribcage.

A parakeet on her shoulder
is flaking off the sun and feathering the moon.

Steamy sundowns moisten her saucer eyes.
One dog pops sausage through its skin. She fans
the minty menthol. I pay the price
for squinting. I've dropped my glasses. Splitting

off-key shattered glass,
the containment of what used to be
bits of me shows up digits-bloodied.
Long after the initial sweep up,
little jagged cuts still happen.

Exposed

From this angle the bushes do not conceal them.
Are they hinged or unhinging?
Each body is a prison gate for the other,
both seem stuck together by a pungent lip spit.
Feathering fingers pulse-play over gulping skin.
Greedy eyes zoom in,
unbuckling muscles sift and trowel,
modelling the creaming and palpable.
This public act despoils the evening
yet it also sweetens.
I feel the need to rut,
to suck inward all this carnality,
to sup upon this liqueur of spiced flesh,
even though my cupped hands
remain regretfully or not,
unsullied.

A Deeper Listening

What we hear is a haunting,
of words not said,
there’s only this deep listening,
yet who or what attends?

Something mundane is said,
a sudden potency,
a brief sonic feathering
awakens inner ears.

The mention of an ordinary thing
connects us,
a span of invisible tissue,
bridges one foreign language
to another.

Tympanic bones
drum to the same beat.
contrary vibrations
dance in step.

Meanwhile the passion
keeps pouring through,
conjoined
synaptic junctions,

and our words
try to keep up as best they can.

Warm Days of Spring

Warm
are days
every Spring
as flowers bloom
and honeybees buzz
in search of sweet nectar.
The season of birth and growth
Songbirds sing while feathering nests
and leaves reappear on bare-limbed trees.
It's the time when nature paints the world green

Sand and Sea

The sandy beach and the ocean
obviously do not understand each other.

Each wave falls upon the shore,
as if it had never met that shore before.

The sand attempts to flow away,
yet scuttled crab legs
and the weight of empty shells
slows it to a shackled crawl.

Eventually,
the unstable edge of that feathering lip
tumbles into the sea.

Then the salty, always thirsty water,
turns away to flow more swiftly
through the open gills and mouths
of the unanchored
and free.

October Carvings

Gray wings
at the edge of a threadbare blue.
A feathering that attenuates
and denatures.

Beneath somber clouds
stone angels watch
green granite deathbeds
crumble
in darkening dens.

October slips
through our eyes leaving no footsteps.
We are unaware of its coming
until we close those eyes tight,
then under squeezed lids
they glint starbright.

Sea-deep into a restless night
we may apprehend
the faces of the bloodless
as they seek
some last verdant masks to cover
their ice-sculptured features.

Pastel Flower Sparrow-

Soars                          Soars
        Sparrows                         borrows
              Leaves       on         greens
            Shrubs         and        scrubs
                 Tender so Feathering
                         Flowering 
                 Shapes & shades
                 Brightly           blurred
             Colorful                beautiful
        Constant                   nectar
 Sparrows slips                   into flower







written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2023

The Gulls Maw

A raw red crater of hunger;
the clacking tongue a buckram spear
shaken at all comers.

The gulls mouth is the gull,
the gullet is the gull
the torso, the snowy pale blue plumage,
that dark under-feathering
all the body of the bird
a perfect bow
for the arrowing beak
and its raucous bugle.

A neck stretched for greed;
above that gorge, hard-set and avaricious,
glint eyes long allied to savage seas.

The bird has the primal scream
of a scavenger,
the gall of the harassing hunter

- and yet is admirable,
sleekly beautiful, often graceful,

until,
rigid jaws agape
we regard its wide-open craw,
wince
as those shears clamp down
on some still wriggling shred.

Feathering Your Nest

My feather duster shed a plume,
From overuse, you might assume,
But you’d be wrong; my living room
Is good at hiding dust.

Yet that stray feather made me muse
On how the furnishings we choose
Provide our visitors with clues
About us they can trust.

Our décor, modern or antique
And ostentatious, plain or sleek,
Allows much more than just a peek
At what’s below the crust.

Though birds may decorate their nest
With shiny objects they’ve finessed,
Like us, they hope they have impressed
By how they’ve fluffed and fussed.

The Poems I Never Wrote

a passing thought 
of beauty, as the sun crowns
slowly departs into the west horizon
with blazing pillars of light 
cirrus clouds on either side 
feathering out like angel wings
as the moon traces behind
like a puppy dog on a leash 
still, in a gorgeous sky-blue background
a vision not often seen 
half written,
in number two pencil 
in a spiral notebook
with the red front cover closed 
forgotten. 


10/5/2022

The Door

Peeling splintered wood,
rust and creeper.
When pushed, it dragged on the ground,
opening a gap just enough for a boy
to slip through.

Inside, only foundations and rubble
partly mulched newspapers,
their edges still dry enough
to flap in the wind.
Dead pigeon smudged into rot,
desiccated wings
trembled by feathering gusts.
Bacon rinds and coffee grinds
among the weeds;
a jumble of parasitic shadows.

Then a real find;
a plastic pen with a lady on it.
If you turned it upside down
her clothes fell off!
Alone, looking at the naked pen-lady,
the boy seeing her more as a doorway
than any plaything. A threshold
to curiously push against.

Rumors of Spring

Greening trees thatch back
a tattered sky.
The cock-a-hoop of Cardinals,
roosters and cawing crows
all kicking-up patches of sound,
ruddy periods in the catchy sonics,
canorous stops and starts.
all in a catawampus.

I am far from song yet.
my ears are bats hung from chilly temples,
but I do feel a coyote-itch
a hitch and twitch of subliminal nooky,
My springs are unwinding
in the imminent offing.

I do imagine bosky blooms
upon the hairy chops of whistle pigs,
and conjure getaway goslings
gandering, all within a fuzzy feathering
of a new-fluffed season.
I do.

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