Long Untended Poems
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The Old Rusty Gate
Bright sunbeams puddle on a summer road,
Lazy bumblebees rise up with the heat,
Leads to a rusty gate, mysteries bode,
Barrier opens wide, invites come retreat.
A garden gate where pale lilac plumes lounge,
Secluded secrecy of hollyhocks,
Where snarled blackberry vines freely abound
With tangled climbing roses and white phlox.
Abandoned garden grows in wild array
Behind the gate that each day spawns more rust
Untended briars – forlorn nights - sad days –
Footpaths clog with the spells of ragged dusts.
Season’s pass, erase footprint signatures
‘Til life blooms from rusty gate overtures.
6-23-22
Contest: One in Five
Sponsor: Joseph May
Title Chosen: The Old Rusty Gate
When a whore house was fun
I sat down to write about flowers, those often
called weeds and grows on untended pavements
but another thought got in the way as I recalled
that flowers in a whore house are usually plastic
except for a chrysanthemum on
a painting on a wall of an artistic whore
I have had much fun in houses of ill-repute
it is not only sex but also laughter and dance
The girls liked young sailors and the possibility
of a steady relationship.
It did happen to a sailor coming home from Brazil
with a blushing bride, no need to tell how
they had met
Time has changed, women are victims of men's
sexual demands and places where many victims
operate from have been closed down
Just as well, women in this trade are sex workers
and if not treated rightly, can take a customer
to court, or try a little blackmail
Whoring was more moral before you paid and
had a laughter, not hard-headed business
as the line of work has become
Tap Tap Tap.
An arm emerges from the stone,
A hand,
A head.
Legs shaped for moving.
Hands carved for giving.
Tap tap tap.
Shaped with intention, purpose, and skill
The stone carver is a talented man.
Potential radiating from the art
Tap tap tap.
A mind made to choose.
Steady, strong, and somewhat uncomfortable,
The tapping continues on.
But a new sound enters the mix
A whispering of wonders
A breath of bliss.
It whispers of pleasure, freedom, comfort.
Away from the Carver’s clicking.
It promises more than work could ever give
“Here, you can do as you wish.”
Abandoning the carver, the stone rushes away
To freedom and bliss
To live life their way.
Happiness fills the angles of its form,
Light dances over its rough surface.
Every edge hums with delight,
And the wind sings in its ears.
But the unfinished stone stumbles and falls.
Tiny fractures appear, multiply.
Untested and untended, the stone is falling apart.
Why would the Carver make you weak?
CRACK
You can fix this on your own.
CRACK
The Carver will never take you back.
CRACK
You are not worth saving.
CRACK
My legs are broken.
My arms are crooked.
My brain is twisted.
My eyes are shattered.
With trembling hands, I try to veil my fractures in my own dust.
The dust does not hold.
It slips from the cracks,
falls useless at my feet.
I press harder.
The fractures widen.
The whispers are gone.
So is the bliss.
Only silence
and then, faintly,
Tap.
I choke on the word.
It scrapes out of me, broken
Carver…
No demand.
No excuse.
Just a plea through shattered stone.
Tap tap tap.
He accepted me.
With patent kindness the Stonecarver chips away my shattered stone.
He revealed flesh.
Tap tap tap
Blood flows through me like fire!
I am undone and remade.
I inhale.
(Sir Frederick Treves, Victorian surgeon, has the
following claims to our respect: (1) he discovered
and cared for Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man":
(2) He followed the route in Italy of the characters
in Browning's "The Ring & the Book", taking
priceless photos: and many more things!)
The Eloquent Man
Sir Frederick Treves enjoys four claims to fame:
the lifelong friend of Thomas Hardy, who
supped with him in the King’s Arms snug: the name
of Joseph Merrick (Robert Browning, too!)
is intimately linked with his: he’s due
a place in heaven for his healing feats:
and yes, he lived here, on the street of streets.
It’s Dorchester, or Casterbridge to some.
And Treves, a native, knew its ways and whims
as well as Hardy did. When he succumbed
to his appendix, genteel pseudonyms
were dropped. Tom Hardy chose the funeral hymns.
He also honored Treves in gentle rhymes,
to mark his passing, in the London Times.
The wretch named Merrick, or the Elephant Man,
could well have lived his loveless life untended,
had Treves not found him. Merrick’s mortal span
was made more bearable, being befriended
by one of London’s foremost. When it ended,
poor Joseph Merrick, long reviled and scorned,
found home in Wimpole Street, where he was mourned.
King Edward feels a grumble in his tripes,
and sends for Surgeon Treves, the kingdom’s best.
“You mustn’t operate,” the sovereign gripes,
“My coronation’s looming.” “Which seems best,”
asks Treves – “a crowning, or cremation?” Pressed
to give an answer, Edward takes the knife –
and Treves the genius saves his monarch’s life.
The poet Browning wrote some novel verse,
or rather, a verse novel: ring and book,
Italian murder tale. Treves was immersed
in it, obsessed with it, completely hooked:
went off to Tuscany, made notes, and took
some photographs, made sketches, thus preserving
the base of fact. The man defines “deserving”!
ON TENDING THE GREAT ANCESTRAL FIRES
Here lies the residue
Of an old fire
Long gone
Dry—Ashes
Left to the whelms
Of raindrops to dampen
Into a useless mush—
Or for the wind to blow
Aimlessly to nowhere;
Wet and immobile
Or blowing dry in the wind,
Useless are cold ashes.
Here, scattered among the warm ashes,
Lay hot remnants of a once great fire
Gone untended—abandoned as.
Often, tenders of great fires are released
From their duties by the thirst of death;
Others are just scared away.
Be whichever it may, great fires
Cocoon themselves in charcoal hued embers.
Charcoal hued embers—steamers of raindrops
And lovers of re-birthing winds of ignition.
Come chilled children;
Movements are like unsettled ashes
Of social interchange; revolution,
Like volcanic embers of transformation.
Come cocooned children;
Let us gather and stoke volcanic embers
That we may metamorphose in the presence
Of the Great Fire spirit of our ancestors—
Least we devolve into the staled mush of ashes.
Across the wide meadow of verdant green,
splashes of pastel pink waved in the breeze.
One of the lovliest wildflowers I've ever seen
appeared to ebb and flow like restless seas.
Delicate, the buttercup, its veins finger-traced.
This wildflower beauty with nectared center
stands patiently waiting with an upturned face,
welcoming pollen seekers with, "Please enter."
Enmass they flourish as a grand gift of Nature.
Growing in profusion, untended, they live and die.
They've inspired artists to paint their portraiture,
and innocently open their petals to the butterfly.
April 12th, 2017
Ode to a Flower(s) Contest
Shadow Hamilton
Wishing the kiss of sunlight was the warmth of ruddy lips,
the crisp breeze, the sharp scratch, desire.. from your finger tips.
remembering, the emerald grass blades teasing my back and neck,
the heat of earth enfolding me, your wish was not suspect.
The crisp breeze, the sharp scratch, desire.. from your finger tips,
sent shivers of purple passion across my up turned hips.
The heat of earth enfolding me, your wish was not suspect,
promises faithfully taken quickly broke through false neglect.
Sent shivers of purple passion across my up turned hips
to a garden long untended, he came with marksmanship.
Promises faithfully taken, quickly broke through false neglect,
and the damn of longing’s token was broken without regret.
A tear teases eye when the sun shines buys, so much happiness.
remembering, the emerald grass blades teasing my back and neck.
Dreaming of love in the rye grass, star clad in eagerness,
wishing the kiss of sunlight was the warmth of ruddy lips.
* revisited often in my dreams
she plays scenarios in her head
till she can’t distinguish
shades from fact or fiction
it started out all innocent
at first she didn’t sense the danger
she let her thoughts play drift
and skip ahead of herself
like an untended garden
the weeds soon taking over
she spirals down a private rabbit hole and
plays such games not meant for children
the type with hidden consequences
like mental variations of russian roulette
she’s gone offtrack
caught in a cycle
she’s really lost her way
it’s gone too far
i see her deteriorating
and i can’t save her
it breaks my heart to see her fear and mental anguish
that's sadly now her cross to bear
AP: 3rd place 2025, Honorable Mention 2025
Ecotone
I did not plant the prairie tickseed that appeared among
The cultivated flowers of my garden and quickly dominated.
It seemed to say, “We live, still!
My house sits in a tension zone, an ecological “no man’s land” where
Tall Grass Prairie and the Cross Timbers, vie for control.
Here the vagaries of weather assure that all who enter are mistreated.
Seasons turn through the Zone as Fall, Winter, Spring,
And the Heat. The moisture-prickling Heat, like a visit from
The in-laws, comes early, stays long and wearies the endurance.
Rainfall is the fickle arbiter of the Zone. It befriends the trees
Almost; the grass too much. Legions of plants, playthings
Of climate, contending over millennia for land suitable to neither.
They were not untended. Cultivation by wild fires, twisting winds, floods
And drought, performed acts of purification and renewal; encroachers purged,
Minerals recycled, seeds scattered, and the arena reset for the endless contest.
But gone now are blades of Blue Stem and pickets of Post Oak.
Red subsoil overlaid with Bermuda sod is my “Sooner” system;
An inanity to the Zone kept on life support by irrigation and fertilizer.
Bermuda minders are hungry yet grow heavy with time
And plenty. They seek order amid uncertainty, and
Shelter from risk, yet cast their lot in a tension zone.
Their dis-ease stems from attempted breakouts of the Cultivators
Struggling to wrest free of human controls. (They who are said to have
Ears to hear a wildfire in its death throes claim it hisses, “We live, still!”)
They are not alone. Homes of the coastal naïf become
Mere tender for Chaparral fires as those of a floodplain
Are flotsam for the river.
Like mallards returning to the same pond
After each thinning by hunters, the unwitting
Rebuild as the Cultivators whisper, ”We live still”
Copyright Paul Thomson 2017
The memory of fires
Rage in my dreams
Though cooled to embers
Hidden beneath the ash.
The heat comes nightly
Scorching flesh in the scent
Of brimstone and desire
With a touch of Spring.
Embers left untended
Erupt from time to time
Allowing wildfires to reign
Havoc over beauty.
So do I let go of campfire memories--
of joy and singing from the soul,
Stamping them out and pouring water
Until all is cleansed in the stream of smoke?
Or do I come back to tend the embers
Knowing dancing flames may burst forth
With the potential for warmth or destruction
Twirling in abandon of love and happiness?
Some choices are not easy, my friend, and once made, must be seen to conclusion.
And so I dither, wondering if the coals are
Warmth for old age, or heartache's forecasts.