Long Marrow Poems
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A chain of events has lead me to this here and now,
it is a twisted chronicle and woeful history;
but, I will spare you the complete saga of my life.
I have spent part of my journey barren and hallow,
my tears have been full of empty whys and weeping;
grief is a prison- I can affirm and attest to that.
It is amazing that my spirit had a chance to grow,
but, with temerity and recklessness I kept creeping;
in the dark of night unable to sleep I have felt flat.
Yet, I think the overtone of my life is my wow,
the nuance and shadows are all part of the mystery;
I survived- although I have known life's knife.
Somehow, I always find the crevice and the sun's glow,
through a crack in my life the light comes seeping;
an aperture opens for me and I shake off my past.
I have known great love, friendship and too many a foe,
and yes, I do have a proclivity to weeping that I like keeping;
but, in my innermost marrow there is a strength vast.
_________________________
November 2, 2018
Poetry/Rhyme/This Here and Now
Copyright Protected, ID 11- 1082-312-02
All Rights Reserved, 2018, Constance La France
Written for the Standard contest, Eight Word Challenge-9
sponsor, John Hamilton, Judged 11/2018
Second Place
you …
sweetly spun me
like sugar into cotton candy -
from a dizzy bobbin
to ornament for a spring willow …
no lament avowed,
for there is a demon in your eyes
whose night blade feeds …
he stalks me -
spurious spear in his grasp
not near as lethal as the shimmer
that winks me from those depths, abyssal
or the tender tendrils, oily black
reaching from the unfathomable fathoms
to sunder my forsaken heart
and turn my marrow
molten … melting …
flesh burning for your arrow -
welts of passion that thirst
to weep crimson
yet not even you can pierce that
hermetic husk …
hardened by casual care,
another’s name,
and the tear-tempered steel
of your bewitching …
gaze.
Copyright © Gregory Richard Barden, January 6, 2024
( painting by Bruno Barreira taken from public domain files at Saatchi Art )
CONTENTS (…may have settled during shipping and handling.)
Preface by C. Günter Marrow
Prologue by Zoltan Goliath
Cycle I. FAITH HEALERS & HEARSAY MIRACLES
Ghosts from the Well
Hard Lessons
Chest of Drawers
Cycle II. RAW PERFUME
Social Insecurity
Rogues’ Gallery
Business as Usual
Cycle III. ORDINARY FAIRY TALES
Dry Stone Wall
A House with No Servants
Let’s Put this Night to Sleep
Cycle IV. FLOTSAM & JETSAM
Sausage, Head Cheese & Scrapple
The Institution
Should the Levee Ever Break
Cycle V. SCARS OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
Light at the End of Tunnel Hill
Light Keeper’s Testament
Light in a Quiet Room
Epilogue by Otis Trench
At one-and-twenty years the cauldron sings,
Not sound, but time condensed from perished things:
From vows worn thin as hinges in the rain,
From skylarks stitched to dusk with threaded pain.
From ploughshares’ brows still dark with borrowed loam,
Here syllables took weight; here grief made home
Inside the mouth, where utterance once failed,
And silence learned the load it had inhaled.
No chapel this of lacquered wit or pose,
Where praise repeats what already it knows;
But hearth and weather both, where voices came
Unhoused, uncredentialed, scorched, yet flame.
Here meter bent its law to keep its faith;
Here sense arrived by fracture, not by swathe;
Thought surfaced like a bone the field laid bare—
Uncleaned, unnamed, yet truer for the air.
Metaphor was not adornment here,
But seed flung blind into a brutal year;
It split by waiting, not by will to bloom,
And learned the patience of a narrowed room.
Then language failed—no trope could hold the part;
A sentence broke, and history went dark.
What should have stood here does not stand at all:
Absence itself completes the interval.
O vessel—thou hast held what hands refuse:
A child’s erased name learning how to bruise,
A prayer that lived though belief withdrew,
Wars folded small enough to make them true.
Here love stood stripped of promise, kept its breath,
Not spared from loss, but trained to walk with death;
Here joy arrived without its bright disguise,
A thing that lived by not explaining why.
Now mark the hour: the broth runs dark with years,
Ferments of awe, distillments born of fears;
Yet still it feeds. Still rises, line by line,
What mouths were schooled too early to resign.
Not all who drank were comforted or spared;
Some left more wounded than when first they dared;
Yet truer wounds were named, and naming stayed
Where false relief would only have betrayed.
Drink, then—not to be filled, but to be shown
The hunger is the marrow, not the bone.
So long as one true line burns without plea,
The feast endures. The cost is what we see.
is the tendency of the reddish sunshine
to become drenched some more
let us hear
what the milky-way seamed by pins
says
and it’s you
how much can you be able to read
the venation of the Barringtonia acutangula
can you touch the season of making apples
in the aquarium
the empty bottles without any co-ordinate
that shoulder with endless grief
the hands of the wall-clocks
in a sudden depression
they’re also making crowd
at the beauty parlour
you have promised someday
to present a flower-vase to display some drops of blood
in the circled face
do you remember it
you haven’t floated that turnip
till now
here the month of trumpet-flower
covers everything
with reedy grass
with the festival of colours of the white horses
the new leaves of bananas become associated
the total dipavali rows
along the evening-balcony
taking it as daylight
will any bird fly towards it
then send a walkman
for the bamboo plants
you must go today
in search of the source
of the hand-woven lamp-post
from the pitcher-worship to the kantha-stitch
it is a very large
twelve-horned deer
the mango-marrow
demands more land
demands more kingfisher
the breath of the Ravenala
touches the chicks of the black-pepper
in every evening
the flood that tears the button
touches the bowstring
that passes through the centre of magnolia
He’s a broken leg performer with a crooked second act.
Went from Brooklyn to Las Vegas with his sarcasm intact.
Does a Smith and Wesson stand-up, voice as sweet as antifreeze.
Tells you how he lost his cherry to some hooker overseas.
They call him Mr. Sunshine.
He’s as salty as a used spittoon.
MCs the neon circus
Where he shines just like a plumber’s moon.
Doesn’t pander to his critics. Slanders movie stars for laughs
Wielding heavy-handed put-downs like the jawbone of an ass.
Always orders top shelf vintage; likes his girlfriends under-age.
He’s the truth behind those rumors they found bloodstains on the stage.
They call him Mr. Sunshine.
Claims a hammer as his only tool.
A shylock rooked his agent,
Left him face down in the swimming pool.
He’s a smoke and mirrors pundit; all his opinions are strong.
Pegs some yokel as a sucker and he slams him all night long.
Bet the house at Caesar’s Palace; he was shaken, never stirred.
God, I hope that pregnant widow didn’t take him at his word.
They call him Mr. Sunshine.
He’s as wholesome as a canker sore.
Don’t ever lend him money.
He’ll just blow it at the liquor store.
He’s a poster child for rehab at the bottom of a slump.
Tried to come back with a wisecrack when Aunt Sophie found a lump.
He insinuates his poison to the marrow of the bone.
He’ll be praying for an encore on the night he dies alone.
They call him Mr. Sunshine.
He’s as funny as a dry monsoon.
He isn’t Mr. Starbuck.
He’s just a prick with a sharp harpoon.
Did ya hear the one about those crazy corporate chemists?
They’ve crossed the ebola virus with e-coli bacteria.
It’s being marketed in West Africa by Monsanto as Ebo Cola!
Grinding to a halt his jaws clenching and crunching
Tim had tried all treatments under the sun like
pills and the couch hypnosis even osteo-cranial touches
But his resentments would not abate his vision collapsed
‘an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth’ he held firm in decay
Raging with no temerity anywhere near he nevertheless
felt barren arid infertile unable to grow away from his pain
Maybe a soothsayer would attest reason from potions
and magic so that the saga of misery would be killed by the sage
yet Tim’s obsessive proclivity surrendered all change for the better
When incense and herbal infusions only incensed him even further
he sought wisdom from a witch in the forest a bone monger of sorts
the nuance between nonsense and insight mattered no longer
some old woman with a wart on her nose would make him walk again
She spelt out her price and demanded a token of appreciation
only one rib of them all so she could suck out malicious poison
and get clear sight of the aperture so far occluded by marrow
A story as old as Methuselah or Methuse-Laara to be true in this case
and a wonderful renaissance of stem cell therapy for recovery
28th October 2018
The meaning of the name Laara is said to be famous woman
‘Eight word challenge’ contest sponsored by John Hamilton
Aperture Attest Barren Temerity Saga Proclivity Nuance Marrow
I. The Path Before Her
For years I walked alone—
not by chance, but by choice.
The world felt cold,
and I wore that cold like armor.
Love was a myth,
a tale for the naïve,
while I forged my fate
in the silence of exile.
My heart?
A stranger.
A relic buried beneath
iron will and shadowed skies.
---
II. Her Arrival
Then you appeared—
not as a savior,
but as a spark.
A gaze that pierced
the frost I called home.
You didn’t rescue me.
You reminded me
what warmth could feel like.
Each time I see you,
I am undone.
Not broken—
but rebuilt.
In awe of your grace,
your defiance of odds,
your quiet power
to make the impossible
feel inevitable.
---
III. What She Saw
You saw me—
not the scars,
not the silence,
but the soul still burning beneath.
You called me beautiful
before I believed it.
You held my truth
like a sacred thing,
never flinching,
never fleeing.
---
IV. Legacy Rewritten
You are the jewel
I never sought,
the light I never begged for,
the rhythm that taught
my heart to speak again.
And now,
I do not walk alone.
I walk with wonder.
With you.
---
V. The Echo That Remains
So let this be written,
not just in ink,
but in the marrow of my myth.
She did not just touch my heart—
she awakened it.
And through her,
I remember who I am:
not a shadow,
but a flame.
Not forgotten,
but forged.
The man who walks forward
with love as his legacy.
Lord I am a sinner
And you grace has supplied
Gives me another chance for eternal life
Jesus I ask of you and the Father
Father God forgive me
Of, ALL my sins from birth until now
Father God forgive me
I'm a dirty one
I don't under stand why God Father you love me so
And I thank-you, for another chance
And I thank-you, for my witness
And Father I thank you God for your blessings
I am dirty
Father
Filthy, Lord God
Dirty I am
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
I am dirty
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity
Cleanse me in my spirit inside wash my soul
Oh, Father God clean me from flesh, down to the bone and marrow
I'm just a filthy rag cleanse me so that I may don my purple robe
I'm just a filthy rag cleanse me so that I may don my purple robe
6/11/18
written words by James Edward Lee Sr.
Copyright © 2018
from anthology "FORGIVEN SOUL"
Framed moments zoom, a night of review
as vignettes glide on frazzled woodland
of her mindscape like leaves brushed
in violet before moonlight’s pause.
Every motion, every image bursts
into tints of life- stages...
Embers within her flash: a peachy tot
screaming for jelly ; eighth birthday flops,
escaping from the party clown—
How the mirrors of light enter the marrow
and gracefully recite the stories and poems
from parental death, aborted friendships
to love’s waning kiln. The hum inside her
becomes quiet, awake and fearless...
she inhales dusky breath when musings
fall like twigs and brambles on her bosom.
Yet, the air’s chill hugs her shadow,
moistening her thoughts,
eyes reflecting time's montage...
glassy though amiably refreshed.