Ferrous Poems | Examples

An Abandoned Rural Station

A former place this, a patch where roots rattle,
where stubble has a ferrous frizzle.
A long-truncated railroad stop
humming still with a faded reality.

As dry voices on the wind, they return
- the homesteaders and journeymen,
the harnessed horses.
Pants' cuffs carry kernels
long planted elsewhere.

Caps, coats, and carts
Sweat, rustle and creak,
an invisible locomotion of leaving and arrival.
employed upon an iron labor.

The tall dry weeds are talkative.
Brown boots seem to shuffle
as they wait here or idle.
A hollow clock clacks,
its innards now
are a nest for ticking birds.

Dandelions anticipate twirling flight
under a corn fed sun.
A mid-day heat thrums fragmented rails.
The station seems almost ready
to receive

as if its bygone world
had not forever disembarked.

Something Left Over

It must have been made
and rejected
in times grinding gears –
a knobby irregularity,
a leftover of smelt and dross.

This is all there is
a gobbet of oven clinker,
but behind it I sense cracked teeth,
soot seared across burnt eyeglasses,
blackened bones,
for after the gas came the flames.

Here it is,
a fragment long convulsed
from its own incineration,
an irregular rake-off, smithereens
dragged across a blind stone floor.

This tittle of slag once had to fit something
the rough rim of an iron door perhaps
behind which an old furnace
still cools in faraway minds.
A ferrous chip chiseled from a gulag,
or a souvenir from an SS campfire meet.

There is always something left
after the unthinkable,
always some spicule of irregularity,
detritus to explain or confound
as we toss it back into the fire again.

Makhorka

Eyes drifting
In waiting, 
Silently,
              Gazing
In vain,
Despite it,
He enlarged them 
Widely opened, as if
Searched for something interesting,
Very 
Carefully, 
                  Silently, 

Like a lazy bear, he put it on the old wooden table.
Carefully,
             refolding
his courage
lifting up
ferrous arms
stripping 
Carefully,
a tinny piece,
rolling himself,
In still noise
a cigarette of 
Powerful
low-graded 
rustika,
a variety of
great purge
hunger
killing 
good reason, 
One pack a day
It helped, like hell
Helped.

It helped survive 
the cold, 
and everyday
toil when 
soldiers and ants
starved,
Makhorka,
insecticide 
of freedom. 

Silently,
           Looking in vain,
Despite it,
He kept them 
widely opened, 
Carefully,
                   Silently.

Aureate Dreams

Flood of anonymous agony 
inundates the debris of hope, 
weed-webbed wasteland
of receding reverie
erodes in delirium  
within turbulent essence,
wreckage of life piles up,
            unlived,
transforms rapture garden 
into winter badland 
of foreboding discontent,     
            perceived.
 
Future meadow waits 
to be sauntered
            sanguine,
invents fantasy alchemy,
making magical gold
from ferrous aspirations,                            
gilding rusted crust 
of weathering present,
           metamorphosed,
marigold ecstasy blooms 
in the Midas-touched mind,
           mesmerized.
 
Wrapped by golden rays 
of garnet sun,
setting sublime  
beyond the content ocean,
entranced mind rolls
in twilight zone 
on sapphire life waves,
            broken, 
yearning psyche is drawn 
within the anguish trough,   
crashes on existential shore, 
shaped by the shadow 
of pearlescent past,
           petrified
in the collapsed sandcastle  
on the beleaguered beach
of the stilled time,
enfolding the blanched grains
of aureate dreams,
          d i s i n t e g r a t e d…..

I Saw A Woman Emerge From A Shadow

I saw a woman emerge from a shadow
   With a sly demeanor and look about.
Her sequined dress was aglow.
   She didn't know I was also out.

I watched her remove a silver shoe
   And stick her foot into the mere –
One of the darkest ferrous blue –
   As if testing the temperature.

Her dress was even more brilliant -
   After a countenance of approval -
When she crossed the bleak horizon -
   Careful not to soak her lunar veil.

High Rise Legends

London growls under the tread
of diesel driven dreams.

A stork visits,
an attic full of discarded toys.
White mice sleep in pajamas,
made of childish nightmares.

Barges reek still, just as when,
sweat was as common as dirt.

A window in Baker Street,
opens to let pipe smoke out,
it uncoils in the air
like a left-handed genie.

Meat mongers return to their,
gore-soaked cradles
before the dawns leery light.

The city is a fable,
there is fuel oil seeping,
through tunnels and runnels,
where entrenched gutter snipes
lie low and wait.

Denizens' crabwalk
along Regents Street
barking Chinese commands
at oppressed corgis.

Stately towers are pressure washed,
until they shed a dark sunlight
that fractures ferrous raindrops.

Tenements sink under the weight,
of red carpets
until the blood flows
out of them.

London by night,
is a veneer,
a crust
of low expectations.

The Boats In the Harbour

The many boats around sit in the harbour
One tailing the other now and then
Serried lined and flanked with one another
They pause for thought gathering day before them

The ferrous water sits so still in motion
As plankton line the sterns and afts like moluscs
Peeping over ropes and bobbing under
Waiting out the storming rain and thunder

They never see a passer by or vendor
Instead their vision remains steady on the water
Where promises of undulating sea throngs
Bring mystery to ocean faring wonder

Iron Rain

The sky turned from drab to gunmetal grey;
pewter raindrops slipped through pools of mercury.
I went out onto the covered deck to smoke a cigar.
Steely hued geese flew through metallic showers,
ferrous sheets of sleet crashed into a leaden haze.
It was easy to imagine platinum dioramas turning
within each particle of soaking spindrift.
I thought of space junk, not ours, but an alien detritus
drifting in from a thousand galaxies,
hundreds of space craft abandoned and defunct
all slipping, unmoored into fragments
falling and smelted small
within times rendering forge.
A plunging litter of far explorations -
one last landfall upon our far flung world
as the dissolved ore of a once iron will.

Something Left Over

It must have been made
and rejected,
in night’s grinding gears –
a knobby irregularity,
a leftover of smelt and dross.

This is all there is
a gobbet of oven clinker,
but behind it I sense cracked teeth, 
motes in a burnt eyeglass,
the thin singed bones 
of fledgling flights into darkness.

Here it is,
a fragment long convulsed 
from its own incineration,
an irregular rake-off, a detritus 
dragged across a blind stone floor.

This tittle of slag once had to fit something
the rough rim of an iron door perhaps
behind which an old furnace
still cools in faraway minds.
A ferrous chip chiseled from a gulag,
or a souvenir from an SS campfire meet.

There is always something left
after the unthinkable
is thought upon,
always some spicule of irregularity 
to explain or confound
as we toss it back into the fire again.

Silent Anonymity

Who can view me behind the fence ferrous! 
Those infiltrating eyes bear me desirous! 
Unveiling what was previously hidden. 
Keeping this same watcher has striven.
 
I figure you should say, "What's in plain view!" 
Penny for your ideas as they decay in a dark row. 
Truth is a precursor to the hotly slated freedom. 
The spilling from torn gum is giving a storm!

Am I a true enchanter worthy of notice? 
I feel you crying, so please, let me focus. 
I never set up in front of an audience.
I starve to escape the irritating sequence. 

But does it work to retain me from leaving? 
This clutter adds to the overall styling. 
Do they have any considerable difference?
Do I cave in, or do I dazzle with my openness?

What has me scared! How am I striving to hide? 
None, however, can bear reality inside. 
After the Inquest, I cast the net vast and bleak. 
Induce them all to cave up the skill to peek!



Written: October 3, 2021

Iron

Sunday did not pan out,
an iron faith faltered.
It was a wane wobble.
it was cellular rust,
it was not enough iron.

Iron pills rattle in me like BB pellets,
my stools are obsidian artifacts.
More red wine, less whine.

The day got no better,
anemic confusions swirled.
I sucked upon nuts and bolts,
listened to Metallica,
had to iron-out yet more
non-ferrous unpleasantness.

Contour of Hinges

she stumbled over her own shadow

on course for one more restless night

a candle on the window sill flickered

bade farewell to the day’s struggle

scented with the fragrance of sweat


it was not so much a nightmare but

a vivid recollection of what had been

as the drenched duvet made her shiver

cotton wool draped over her eyes

made her remember the lashes 

from the whip of another encounter

with the truth of her serrated narrative


too weak to talk with the demons

fearful and anxious of an uncertain future

she looked at the corroded hinges


of the closed casement that barred her view

ferrous rust played a ferocious serenade

in tune with the wind unable to soothe

somehow however the dust finally settled

and closed the narrow aperture of sorrow


her gaze fell upon the slender doorway

behind which had to be an outline of hope


when she squeezed through the dubious opening

she dared to question the sun and the moon

settled for the unknown as an act of resistance 

and walked out of her life
 

03rd August 2021

A Storm Rushes In

A crocodile-hide sunset,
a ferrous squall;
somethings boiling up there.

Storm gulls
beat mosquito clouds away
as they flee.

Ten wild horses corralled in a dumpster
hammer my fearless heart.

An anemic sky gulps for breath
near or far
a brawling trample scuffs the earth. 

The dimming light drips strings 
of gelid spittle.
Vaporous stalactites shred an acrid air.

Now a ferrous rain cuffs and pelts.
I hide my face from its eyes,
follow a screaming ghost
into the house.

Equus Ferrous

Equus ferrous 

There is a storm blowing when blue waves crash ashore 
white horses with flying mane gallop up, blocking the road.
 The stallions become a river, pushing useless cars aside
 to drown in their futility.
 The town below is a lake, rats escaping the sewers runs
up to the third-floor frightening people with their anger
eat babies’ eyes.
 A new generation of the unseeing kind, the previous one 
could see but didn´t understand busy
as they were playing with the cell phones taking selfies.
Everything ends, calm sea the wild white horse went back
to the bay, and the rats moved back to the sewers

Iron Rain

The sky turned from dewy drab to gunmetal.
Pewter raindrops slipped down the window like mercury.

I went out onto the covered deck to smoke a cigar and sky gaze.
Iron winged grey geese had shed their metallic plumage,
ferrous sheets of sleet crashed into a low leaden haze.

Easy to imagine infinitesimal steel dioramas turning
within each particle of soaking spindrift.

I thought of space junk, not ours, but an alien detritus
drifting in from a thousand galaxies,
hundreds of space craft abandoned and defunct
all slipping, unmoored into fragments
falling and smelted small within times rendering forge.

Evidence of dead-end hopes and far explorations.
I watch this riven wreckage rolling in
apprehend through clouds of cigar smoke
its last landfall on our far flung world
as a dissolved ore in a backwash of rain.

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