Plumbed Poems

I must fast'

I will fast and ask the Lord..In prayer petition and happy
Accord 'for an awakening in the world and land of my birth' a turn
To God and away from the dearth.' The depths they have
Plumbed in popular trends which are all false idols may 
They make amends, killing infants is murder..It I really so
Wrong and walking in perversion.' And how it went on..
There is great need of purging.' Of  the hubris of evil.'
Is there not enough in thsee land sof plenty and such great
Created beauty.? Turn from destruction.' Remove the bad
Governence then live with 'the true love of Gods spirit'
And lets all our gains upon then 'ring fence'

colors in my town

Melancholy
passed those grey purple sandstone faces 
glowing on an ember sun
in the old mahongany buick we used to
drive in
down those highway lines that struck fast with their electric yellows and 
white hot itensity
down the sea foam over pass the one
on the old side of town
all blues and indigo ink runs down beneath the sub floors
bleeds into the streets as 
black india
the sterling life beneath which only they
now know having plumbed black water since
as if we remembered
shock white marshmellow foam floats on the surface
lit by a cold faceless 
not yet waned 
where then were those grey
purple sandstone faces
and her clear blue, of
new dawn

flurries

words form in a flurry
bleeding saccharine too too much 
all the crushed kaleidoscope colours
signature pastels and sparkling vibrants, 
a tenderfoot cherry, with little of life yet to go by, 
still art, that one is full to the brim with stitched up wisdom,
bleeds like watercolours across canvas melting messy hearts like chocolate,
la Ingénue’s cup overfloweth with abortions of sugary poésies
plumbed ripe and read, dripping black currents
legs wrapped around broomsticks of diamonds






Candide Diderot. ‘24

The Other

It is always there,
never quite within range
where the mind can snare
some shadowy form, or shape
an outline and hold it long enough 
to name. 
It waits for the sun to go down 
and the evening to draw in 
like a taken breath when it comes
closer and nestles into what warmth
lingers there under the folds
of a gathered dark.

Sometimes when I am off
elsewhere and far away in thought,
I am sure it slips inside my head
and enters where memories are,
trying on a face, posing 
in some familiar scene, 
rummaging through what a child 
left there long ago as if 
it was searching for itself.

And there are mornings 
when waking I sense its presence 
in the dissolving residue of a dream,
a small footprint left on that 
shore between awareness and sleep,
an indent, a scooped out hole 
where something broken
took refuge and sought comfort
in being near.

There are dark times 
when it almost becomes 
a plumbed in part of me, 
each bunkered in our own
adjoining rooms, held apart 
by a wall neither of us
want to breach. We have spent
a good part of our lives here,
holding onto what should be set free,
fearing that if we did, one of us
would cease to be.

White Noise

1.
arrogant conceit -
haiku’s meaning is province,
owned by its readers

2.
God’s movement’s verbal -
pictures cannot be haiku
one-offs have seasons?

3.
haiku definitions
are joke, experts are drowned rats -
to breathe is haiku

4.
words are seasonal,
extinct languages prove this -
just feelings are real

5.
brevity’s divine
truth’s asymptotic, god-like -
what’s simple’s more true

6.
man’s rules are white noise -
haiku’s depth’s unplumable,
but seasons are plumbed


Brian Johnston
23rd August in 2022

The River

I can hear the slow
thump and thrash
of a ship's propeller 
churning the dark and see
the sheer black wall
of a hull slide by,
gathering the river in
like a skirt,
then releasing a train
of wakes to run
up banks and rock
the calm.
Solitary fishermen sit quietly
in private vigils
along the river's length.

All night they stare
into an absolving still
and move between 
a mind's floating absence 
and the tip of a rod
plumbed to depths
beyond human.
After the ship has passed
they wait
for the river to heal
and mend the lesions 
in a tactile language.

Down river
a floodlit smoke stack
rises like a spire
out of the ruins of a factory.
High above,
a great wheeling dome
of seagulls fleck
a charcoal sky
and smear noise across
a vaulted quiet.
A lifetime on I hear
the discordant hymn,
feel the menace
of something moving shapeless
below the reach of words
and wait for the river
to heal.

Anna and the French Kiss

She’d kissed a lot of boys, and some kissed great,
but few of those guys understood romance.
She thought she knew what kissing style was best,
but she had not yet met the boy from France!

Into her life one day he sauntered in.
His smile was soft, his eyes as dark as coal.
She thrilled to feel his fingers on her skin
as with his gaze he deeply plumbed her soul.

When their lips touched, she melted into him.
It was a kiss like none she’d known before.
With happiness she filled up to the brim.
The young man was so easy to adore!

Like things most precious, that smooth, tender kiss
was part of Anna’s youth – a fleeting bliss.

Aug. 26, 2021
For the Anna And The French Kiss Poetry Contest of Mystic Rose Rose

Drowning In Solitude

DROWNING  IN   SOLITUDE



Wishing my way home.  Cold wind, soul-drenching. 
Time’s tick slows as we near overhead track,  
Drowning in solid dark. Turn collar back - 
Grimy solitude breathing in the  grey. 

Worse than the wait, her bus arrives too late :  
I’ve often plumbed the black waves of weakness ;    
But now  I float, an empty sack of strength. 



15   March   2021

Amazonia

Tender
emerald realm ...
lungs of the earth
to span a continent, wide -
jade labyrinth of wonder and mystery.
Like a serpent, its watery namesake winds and slithers,
the strength of its back, untested,
colors and creatures of limitless kind and contingency,
peoples yet untouched by civilization,
and drowned in an ocean of foliage ...
its bounding abyss barely plumbed,
extraordinary species, as uncounted as counted,
and a tangle so snarled ...
that it hisses only at the grand Atlantic,
its mighty meandering coaxed to current and tide.
Beast of brute and beauty,
begotten of the Andes and the heavens, high -
a world begs your precious breath
and bold, boundless breadth ...
dangerous and delicate,
wondrous and wild,
untamed ...
tender.





~ 1st Place ~  in the "Wild Country" Poetry Contest, Julia Ward, Judge & Sponsor.

~ Honorable Mention ~  in the "Strand Pick A, Any Theme, Any Form" Poetry Contest, Brian Strand, Judge & Sponsor.

I Don'T Know Where I'M Going With This One

Tides will lecture us, obtrusively, to our faces, 
& it's moments like these we unearth 
probity in outlooks and lookouts 
to crack the skulls of coconuts. some lives
have small windows, & we, like hounds, look 
out  & bayed full moons, through panes. & pain,
bringing the high to where the last line 
is breathed and we are plumbed. & this 
takes fix after fix, to cultivate depravities,
gifts & slumlords, spitting from penitentiaries
the rats & their humans. I saw a few.
This is the kind of stools we sit on
when there is more than blood in our veins
Sometimes guitars sing to us, but the lines ... 
are flat, shattered lives. In death,
there's no dreaming, just dumb sleep

Unsilenced Silence

Fan spinning with an uneven blade
Frogs singing midnight serenades
Traffic stopping horns blowing
Drunks stagger
A man yells
Watch where your going
Horns playing jazz upbeat and in time
Smokers chit chatting on balconies with wine
The steel mill whistle sounds in the air
Pub screams loudly drinking on a dare
Coltrane plays on an old 45
Crackling and hissing aged perfect with time
Wind blowing across the old chimney pipe
Sink dripping not plumbed just right
TV just static 
Pidgeons rustling in the attic
Once the city dies down 
It reminds me it doesn't sleep
As the alarm clock sounds 
I rise to my feet 
A new day the same city
I hurry toward the door
Unsilenced silence greets me with a roar

A Length of Pipe

There was once a thin plumber named Stipe

Whose large wife always nagged with a gripe

She was constantly bummed

For each time that he plumbed

He came up inches short with his pipe



Well, he asked and he asked her to hush

Still, the scolding continued to gush

So he fit his wee shlong

With a pipe, extra-long

And the nagging was gone with a flush!




~ 1st Place ~  in the "Limericks" Poetry Contest, Joseph May, Judge & Sponsor.

(Syllables counted at HowManySyllables.com)

Vincent

...with gratitude to an incomparable artist


Your vision is a beacon
gracing us with golden sheen,
though your heart was dark and heavy
with redemption rarely seen.

You plumbed the probabilities
of faithlessness and fear,
you challenged life's inequities
and often with a tear

of sadness in your dream-dimmed eyes
and shades of anguish too,
this world was never meant
for one as beautiful as you.

Vincent

'...quenchless canvasses of twisted fire,'  Mervyn Peake


Your vision was a beacon 
gracing us with golden sheen, 
your heart was dark and heavy 
with redemption rarely seen. 

You plumbed the incongruities 
of faithfulness and fear, 
you challenged life's inequities 
so often with a tear 

of sadness in your dream-dimm'd eyes 
and shades of anguish too, 
this world was never meant 
for one as beautiful as you.

What Now

WHAT NOW YOUR NEED
come forth you say,
dawns yes indeed ,
another day.
Where white of light will intercede,
The goodness of the world disguise,
1. envelops many of the lies,
2. attaining of your greed.
 
Another tune begins to play,
Equality for all I say,
one right for every person here,
the rich becalmed, the sweat like fear,
equality is plumbed.

To play this tune for all concerned,
a better world to be returned,
when fairness intervenes,
begone oh greed obscene,
the letter of the word.

So cast this feather to the wind,
ensuring destitutions grin,
ignite reason from within,
a golden age unwinds,
no debt of bondage binds,
no fetters so obscene!

Don Johnson

Maverick Avatar
Joe Maverick
Date: 11/28/2015 5:57:00 PM
 Block poet from commenting on your poetry Good and effective format here Don, get all the peoples minds in gear, out of the doldrums time is near..'

Reply 


in this enlightened age we have the power, to connect to the downtrodden of the hour, rebuild the world , in a better light, take from the greedy not so bright, Yes equality is fair!

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