Long Parceled Poems
Long Parceled Poems. Below are the most popular long Parceled by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Parceled poems by poem length and keyword.
By morn, and under cerulean skies,
he rises from sheets and soft pillows of down;
and gives praise; for the Lord is just and wise,
and great to behold by this earth all round.
By noon, he sets about his songs and rhymes,
labors whose creation gives him pleasure,
and purpose, for an infinite lifetimes;
pressed down, piled, and parceled with good measure.
Then, by eve, lest beastly Insomnia
comes, he now and anon derives his rest
from the night's orgies with the Muses: a
reward that none may oppose, or protest.
A bard chaste for all time, and hence unloved,
finds love with the muses: for they're beloved.
He lost her that night.
Before-
Weeks after school and weekends,
weather or not,
they had built the fort-
strong, Indian proof.
Father had provided a tarp.
and his father’s High Standard Sport 22 pistol
for wild animals.
The woods behind the fort
were near the old highway
used by hunters, vagrants occasionally.
Mostly deer.
Mother could see the fort’s flag
which she had sewn,
from her kitchen window.
Part pirate, part cowboy.
His sister was good at tying boughs together for the walls.
He gathered flat stones from the dried riverbed
for the floor.
Test night he brought a sleeping bag
and signaled to Mother with the lamp
before he tried to sleep.
Sounds kept him awake.
He clutched the 22
until it got hot.
But next morning he went in to breakfast
and ate eagerly.
He had made the distance.
His sister stared at him
across the table,
stirring her cereal.
Jealous.
The night she came out
shivering, to join him,
she brought peanut butter and bread-
No knife.
He walked back to get her a blanket
and the knife for the sandwiches,
22 flapping in the revolver holster.
Mother and Father were in the living room
Drinks with friends.
They saw him
Smiled, turned again to their guests.
He walked back.
She was not there.
He called and walked until scratched, bruised.
Tired, he fell back into the fort.
She must be back in her bed.
After, Mother spent nights sleeping in the fort
until he and Father moved away from her.
No bones were found when
the woods were parceled,
developed.
He would go back and drive the new streets,
looking for her.
He would look for her
in places where he was.
What are you thinking about?
They would often ask him.
But he could not tell them.
He carried the slight distance beyond which
she had gone,
often reached into it for her.
And found it went and went,
stretching, stretched
away,
like anyone’s life,
except his own.
A ticket pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off - of course.
Legs are a late harvest, these often-indigent parts
carry a visual poverty long after the body is plucked.
Under watchful eyes the young medics
separate muscle groups, filter large blood vessels
from fibrous runnels, hesitant scalpels
seek out fascial planes.
The leg is devolving to scraps,
yet, ingrained in the tissue
I sense residual shades of a former life,
seaside postcards, old photographs,
perhaps campaign ribbons, odd tokens
amongst yellowed newspaper clippings,
all briefly surface as conjectured images
beneath a probing knife.
The gray flesh retains its personal history,
I imagine that behind the knee
there is a wife, children, and a separation
all spectrally etched between femur and tibia.
Much of the ensuing bone-whittling years
are demonstratively scored
across a formaldehyde and jelled narration.
The students suppose they dissect a limb,
while I notion that I turn over bloodless pages,
of an unwritten story,
and now the last few attached ligaments
remain as threads that speak at last
of a long journey’s end.
His body fell away in parceled shadows.
His mind headed for a mountain cabin he had
hammered together with the long soft nails
of desire.
That first winter was hard,
ground had to be cleared,
wood had to be cut and stacked,
the cabin sealed against gnawing winds.
At night bears explored his defenses,
snow storms probed.
He had to hunt small game to eat,
he set traps. Always cold, exhausted,
and famished,
At night, crazy with hunger,
he would boil the scant food
until he could wolf down
the scalding partly-cooked meat.
He grew thin and wiry. His beard long.
He began to track and bring down deer.
For long days he could rest
as Spring came
to dance lightly on the mountain.
That summer the sheriff drove
then hiked up to pay the newcomer a visit.
He had heard that a dead man had
cleared some acres.
They shared a comfortable smoke
on the front deck.
Then the sheriff asked:
Why he had not moved on
to where most dead folks go to?
He replied:
I was looking for a higher heaven,
one that still needed some climbing.
The Sheriff nodded in agreement.
in the early light of day
i rise from shadows of dreams
two days ago a cousin i hadn’t seen
called to say my aunt had died
at the age of 101 who
time and time thought about me
and a moment of sorrow
became a brief celebration of life
recollections from the last time
of time together my cousin and I spent together
of time I spent on her parents farm
of time she spent at my parents’ summer cottage
a paradise as it lives in my mind
beyond the time it was parceled and sold
we talked about moments passed
and now it’s fall
now i look out the window
at brown leaves in november
once green in may
in reflections of nothingness
and visions of everything
and now
as i plot a busy day
a bird outside of my window
sings a bittersweet song
as the life I knew fades into memory
the whispers of lives of the children
my cousin and I once were
Nature's anvil your hearth did score
Fodder pared from such balmy core
Residual chaff bartered to marine store
Parceled for distant, steamy shore
Billowy waves, your shallow mast is born
No banner, gilded sails your trite estate to adorn
Rudderless barge, with drifting currents your hull borne
Tossed to and fro, of steadying anchor shorn
Your rough-hewn cover slimed corroding each side
Your bark-lined deck withering, leached hide
Resinous fibers bleached by each, briny tide
Sturdy bough eroded along the jostling ride
O'er time brokered to some distant land
Beached on a coarse, lifeless strand
Each callous band scrolled with the swells you have spanned
Depleted contraband seeking a mending hand
Larks are ascending funnels of sky,
songs smoke from enteral chimneys.
In an industrial park a fine Autumn light
burns bright.
Shoes fill with walkers,
we are out and praising
the clanking machinery,
for we are all leaves
in the same furnace.
What we suppose
to be sleep and decline
is a wooded factory, a whittle and grind
gearing-up for an over-spilling,
a bundling color-filled season,
one that will in time
hammer snow out of spoilage.
The Larks are trilling,
they rise to the top of their voices.
Conveyer belts of cooling hymns
are ready to be parceled and sent,
addressed graphically:
'Return to Sender.'
The Amputated Leg
A human leg it is! With senses numbed the village stood around the dump;
It’s a curse! Righteous path we diverted, in shiver, the devotees driveled;
A dog might have dragged it, in what’s app, the android fingered techie drooled;
Consult the occultist, shouted the stout village chief and all became dumb.
Mumbling Sanskrit lines, the temple priest came with Ganges water to damp
The rumbling evil with a sprinkle; Holding their breath tout like Chiseled
Idols stood the village as he summoned the deities reciting mantras unrivalled;
‘Sacrifice one leg of pet or cattle per family to our goddess in her holy ramp,’
Pronounced the priest, in bold piety; they heard him in rapt devotion.
Then came the info youth at the cutting edge of both tech and culture
With police personnel and a dog to sniff out the path of the offenders;
The crisp kakis deftly parceled the amputated leg without any emotion
Off to forensic probe, pilfering the priest’s fee with their faith and culture;
And the dog barked at the careless Nurses, for dumping the leg without defenders.
An hour before dawn,
the market people arrive
then settle like resting birds
beside the Ping river.
Girls squat over large straw hats,
hats brimful of dried chilies
or small freshwater fish.
They lay down bamboo mats
laden with okra, aubergines, mangosteens
and rambutan.
They are not from Chiang Mai
but are a Thai hill peoples,
villagers that have cycled through the night
to bring their produce here.
Carefully they wrap your choices
in newspaper bundles tied
with red raffia.
They offer this livelihood to us
with modest smiles.
A daily subsistence parceled with a grace
that can be felt as a currency, a simple act
of transference.
A few coins are exchanged.
The barter and haggle
of a busy city market is absent here
just the affable contact
of a hand to hand correspondence.
A mutual recognition
of the rivers that join us
and the oceans between.
California Avenue
Shells of two story houses
line a brick-laden street
single dwellings
converted into apartment buildings.
The street of acquaintances
becomes one of strangers,
and no one seems to care
about those who come and go,
and they don’t care, either.
Stories told resonate,
of summer nights
when people sat on porches
and invited passersby
to join conversations.
Facades of houses remain
and hide parceled interiors
now rented, lives hidden
in walls of their creation.