Long Scything Poems
Long Scything Poems. Below are the most popular long Scything by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Scything poems by poem length and keyword.
(a turtle creation story)
Turtle flexed his jaws
as hard as secateurs.
Monkey-See saw
flew up the slippery trees
mimicking
the snapping sound
above the mealy ground.
It was the first Saturday night
and most of the good things,
and most of the mischief
had been sown hours before
but monkey-see knew there would be more.
Fishnet Tights,
the first last-born lady
was crying softly
not knowing why she was weeping and wet.
Her buttery bosoms heaved – we the proto
air-breathing zoo-lings all saw
and most of the swarm grieved
through their embryonic nostrils.
Turtle explained her woe
by opening wide his scything mandible.
When she looked down in it,
Fishnet-Tights saw, red and chortling,
in that ancient maw
his bobbing Adams Apple.
It was then that she became with kids
those troubled knuckle-heads,
the fabled Cain and Abel.
Monkey-See let out a howl
that flew from tree to tree top.
All the scaly birds knew
something big was up.
Turtle winked,
then slept for an eon or two
until all the zoonotic creatures
plumped up - and grew.
On a night in October when the full moon beams
Marsh noises resonate, all is not what it seems
The wind rustles the reeds with a haunting chilling sound
As the awakening dead arise from their dormant cold grounds
Black silhouette's are seen against a backdrop of cobalt blue
The living now need to run, to escape this deathly pursue
Carrying scythes and sickles, they lacerate all breathing souls
To re-enforce their army, the living are their goals
Screams and cries are heard, the unlucky in deadened red
Whilst the fortunate survive, for a long night lies ahead
A new dawn arrives, no longer scything sounds are heard
As we step into the daylight, to take in what's occurred
If you were caught in their open, your breathing no longer reigns
More of the living perish, whilst his dormant armies gain
In the village where I stay, we run and hide underground
How ironic is it, it's where the living can't be found
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/dark-7.php
Poppy
by Michael R. Burch
“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse, “The Second Coming”
It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn . . .
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.
The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows . . .
Pale butterflies in staggering flight
ascend the gauntlet winds and light
before the scything harvester.
The winsome buds of cornflowers
prepare themselves to be airborne,
and it is lonely to be shorn,
decapitate, of eager life
so early in love’s blinding maze
of silks and tassels, goldened days
when life’s renewed, gone underground.
Sad confidante of worm and mound,
how little stands to be regained
of what is left.
A tiny cleft
now marks your birth, your reddening
among the amber waves. O, sing!
Another waits to be reborn
among bent thistle, down and thorn.
A hoofprint’s cleft, a ram’s curved horn
curled inward, turned against the heart,
a spoor like infamy. Depart.
You came too late, the signs are clear:
whose world this is, now watches, near.
There is no opiate for the heart.
Originally published by Borderless Journal
***
Virginal
by Michael R. Burch
For an hour
every wildflower
beseeches her,
"To thy breast,
Elizabeth."
But she is mine;
her lips divine
and her breasts and hair
are mine alone.
Let the wildflowers moan.
***
If Love Were Infinite
by Michael R. Burch
If love were infinite, how I would pity
our lives, which through long years’ exactitude
might seem a pleasant blur—one interlude
without prequel or sequel—wanly pretty,
the gentlest flame the heart might bring to bear
to tepid hearts too sure of love to flare.
If love were infinite, why would I linger
caressing your fine hair, lost in the thought
each auburn strand must shrivel with this finger,
and so in thrall to time be gently brought
to final realization: love, amazing,
must leave us ash for all our fiery blazing.
If flesh’s heat once led me straight to you,
love’s arrow’s burning mark must pierce me through.
Keywords/Tags: birth, light, love, love hurts, flight, flying, life, heart
The heart that beats does scream as my chest tightens,
A sound so sharp it bleeds from me, my every will.
Hath only the mind to break my faith and frightens,
My soul under deep now slaved shall ever be still.
The body does succumb to its own writhing,
I beg this moment cease, the play of such filth,
Like fertile field, every second upon me scything,
It reaps from ground the bounty that blood forth spilth.
The eyes spiral through with sight of mind distorted,
While blind despair does spread as thoughts afflict,
My world falls down, both shapeless and contorted,
I cannot break the grasp that chains constrict.
Into my every being it has pervaded,
The man who weeps as his soul degraded.
HARVEST
Day after day we are out in the sun
Collecting the harvest before it rains.
Day after day until daylight is done,
Scything the ripe hay to fill up the wains.
They say the fresh air is good for our health;
Far better that being cooped up inside.
But we say it’s good for the farmer’s wealth,
Using child labour, it can’t be denied.
All very well for the artist to say
What a beautiful country scene we make.
But we have no time to pose here all day,
Even though we deserve a well-earned break.
We have one more day to finish it all.
On Monday morning we go back to school
Beethoven smashes one piano after another.
He shears through keyboards,
a peasant scything hay.
The composer's fingers don't grow deaf,
they become deeper, more blunted,
like mallets.
His apartment is disorderly,
tools and equipment
are hidden in Dresden figurines,
in elderly Delftware,
ball-peen hammers crammed
into the whittled stems of goose quills.
Augers, grinders and rotary tillers
are rendered into themes and motifs.
Wrecking crews hum and stamp,
tables thump out allegro dissonance.
Into this din and demolition
plows a heavy sonata
the hard-nosed 'Hammerklavier'
bulldozing its trenchant path
into the cramped streets;
where in the absence of safety barriers,
a defiant deconstruction
has begun.
. snake held
. by its tail
. pinched between
. fingers of arm extended
. whips around fangs uncoiled
. striking here biting again
. scything in circles lunging here and there
. flailing like a yellow pac-man gulping at air
. chasing the hand
. that taught it
. to circle
. lying at
. the core
. of the maze
. hungry
. for
. more
An advent of raptors loiters over mall roofs.
hooded eyes scope the neon-lit spaces,
the concreted waste lands.
We wake to their screams as if this were High Sierra,
not Ohio where parent’s try-out or manage children,
open party stores, hunker through the coming
and going of baby Jesus; de-ice puffer jackets.
Gloom is plowed behind snow dunes.
The red-tails roam in loose federations,
their young, mob-handed and loutish,
the mature work alone,
scything through small birds,
the weakened and walking.
The hawks wing-dance proclaiming their time,
a time of frost-bitten electric barricades,
of bobble hats and mittens,
while unseen, a wind-rattled thorny brier,
recites its litany of seasonal prayers.
It’s voice causes the shiver
its name causes the stagger
tremours boiling
fettle downpouring
Heartbeats panicking
families isolating
Like a turret, it oozes
like a trumpet, it blows
emanating shockwaves
spurring Venom
hissing sparks
scything down humans like grass.
Some say the states gave it light
But Daddy says “Wuhan”, without delight
Basking with the thought
“Does Wuhan Gloat,
is it a calculated attempt to free land
Or Divine justice sent from God’s Hand”?
Cities,laid on Siege
Borders, Borded and armed
Starvation creeping
bereaved weeping
unemployment surging
Media, reeking.
But on the Ocean’s Horizon
Africa resides
Its citizens, quite in oblivion
Of the fangs of Poseidon
For whispers says black is a curse
But i tell you, is the reverse.
Born to toil and forever toil,
That’s our only curse;
Brazen for the Saharan sun,
we Suckle the anopheles
Drink from potholes
What then is Covid 19?
Tell Covid 19 that Am black
Wuhan won’t knock on my door
For Toiling from birth to death,
My body is brazen against It
For am Black,
And am food for the anopheles
Tell Covid 19 I banter with lions
Feed the fleas
And though I drink with cows from the gutters
Typhoid fears my face
And though I sleep on the grass,
The cobra bites me not
Tell Covid 19 I endure hell on daily basis
And that it’s but a speck
To that log I carry
That if the world sinks on it
My black Africa would stand
For am black.
A scything rain crops the high reeds.
Never saw the storm coming,
too busy rowing my mind
through its own river.
The ducks and herons have all gone
they have not flown away,
they have closed their eyes,
and like children have become invisible.
My rowboat is taking on water,
mouth open, I think I am crying the sky.
A small rickety landing
crouches from the downpour
maybe, ten slogging minutes away.
I make the torrent torn bank,
the battered truck I arrived in
has a cold,
its engine coughs, as sodden boots
pump a blind escape route
beyond its drowning windscreen.