The silent woman watches,
Shifting in the cold.
Holding coffee in hand,
Watching over the land.
Swiftly through the falling leaves,
Laying in the water.
Boats carving gashes,
Froth burbling up,
In their wake.
The silent woman watches,
As the dock begins to shake.
Glimpses of egrets,
Scream their distaste.
The waves wash up.
Sea oats fall down.
Debris is scattered all around.
The silent woman watches,
Mud roils in the water.
Fish can't breathe,
No more river otter.
The silent woman watches,
The no wake zone.
She moans as the river groans,
Beauty chiseled away.
branches hang heavy
darkness roils overhead
a tiger trembles
lottery tickets
adrift in rain swept gutters
discarded dreams
weeping roses bow
in a stillness silenced scent
a bee bumbles
arachnid two step
a spider shakes his wet legs
a diamond studded web
subdued bells echo
a heavy fog mutes the chime
a stray cat hisses
childish merriment
dark ripples on the water
mud pie take-out
Natural death licking aims
Now our bleach seasons heirs
And the pubis of public lore
Intrauterine spinning blue dream cream
Roils rushing a rock star’s semen searching
For golden lands of rum and sable ladies eyeing
Blown ear-drum truth percussive
Hand-grenade vibrator lipstick hash
Recall spinning reams in a hyperinflation
Of love overture blend ground night hues of whispers
Meaninglessness long snaking verbs of silence wilt low
Screw worm elect obscene emotive drooling apocalypses
The celestial royal purple lake
of my wandering soul's freedom,
in a luminous rowboat of dreams,
as the filled moon's fairest face
reflects the sun's benevolence.
As I dip the oars in stars,
slowly rowing, pondering,
on to where God wants me,
to commune with His
messenger angels,
as I dip the oars in stars.
A covenant with Him,
to pray for humanity-
as it roils on the earth,
and a healing of earth's nature,
O God I weep,
fleeting are the universe's
hours of passage,
yet, prayers for hope's
continuing, for peace,
as I dip the oars in stars. ~
I contemplate the bobber on the water.
It is as still as a friend’s prayer at meeting.
Connected to this moment by monofilament
I sit as if I were asleep.
A gust of north wind roils the surface
into ridges. In the furrow
the bobber dances, dances,
dropping its seed into the darkness
perhaps to lure forth one more wish,
one more harvest from the mystery
before I lose the day’s last light.
As suddenly as the wind came upon me
it dies. Placidity prevails, a perfect crust
of ice on new fallen snow at dawn
untouched by even an insect’s wing.
The bobber is still again
as still as prayer again
Retrieve. . . retrieve . . . a small voice
urges me, unfed need dueling with sense,
to cast again, to cast again.
but I am wearier than I thought
and it is accident time, accident time.
The uncast line is better, much better.
There is something hungry in the water.
The wind picks up, the clouds roll in;
A storm, real soon, may yet begin.
The river roils, the birds steer clear,
Confirming that it’s coming near.
And still I sit, as others stroll,
The day still firmly in control.
The forecast may, in fact, be wrong,
As some suspected all along.
The blue’s receding from the sky;
A single boat goes chugging by
And if, indeed, some rain we’ll get,
The worst will be I’ll run home wet.
The desert wind fares wild and true
O'er a petaled face
Then scurries round with much ado
And roils from place to place.
Here where sunshine bakes the sand
And dries the dusty air
Here where legends roam the land ,
Where mortals would not dare.
A flower rises from the ground
And peers out from her bed.
Bashful, silent, not a sound,
She lifts her new born head.
So, gazing round the dips and dunes
She savours, for a while,
The breeze's repertoire of tunes
That call to cause her smile.
Then with the joy of midday bloom
She, open armed, looks up.
High into the clouded plume
She opens like a cup.
Her colours dazzle desert eyes,
Her perfume scents the day.
Yet closes when the sunlight dies
To sleep the night away.
Constrained, calm and cold, absent all strife
Puerile, placid, flaccid in life
Nothing to venture, little to gain
No bones are broken, no blood to stain…
...The tipping point looms, brain barely roils
Testosterone screams, blood pressure boils
Guts gorged and griping, grab for the gun
Head for the highway, ripping to run
Relentless reaper, sight seems to shrink
Sirens start shrieking, lights locked in synch
Neighbours take cover,
Strangers take flight
There is no pity, dark in this night
May 20, 2021
This jade river roils
into the heartbeat of your weather beaten canyon
wetting the wonderment of a restless rebel
searching for a lost song
yet to be sung,
an ancient wisdom winds through
the young temperature
of your rain forged temple
perfume of broken sandstone
stirs secrets unstolen by Time
while a graveyard of unbroken yet dormant trees
yields an invisible fruit of forgotten fates
a knowledge quiet on the edge of eternity,
yes, there are bones here,
bones that speak of the stars...
J.A.B. 2021
The sun hangs low in the western sky.
The ocean roils beneath.
That red orb seems to hang there forever,
Much like our lives,
Which are recorded in some secret place.
We replay the recording again and again,
And each time it seems so real--
Except sometimes a feeling
Comes over us.
It says, “I have been here before.”
Now a cloud bank obscures the sinking sun.
The twilight deepens.
Like the daylight we all die,
And at that moment a recording deep within
Says, evacuate, evacuate, evacuate.
If we do not heed the voice
We rise again in three days
And are hailed as saviors.
The people eat from our hands
Like sheep.
The sun sinks lower
And darkness descends.
Yet the ocean still pounds
And the surf sounds louder
In the deep twilight.
After may replays,
Like listening to old classic songs,
We grow tired of reliving the life.
And night falls like a hammer.
GYPSY TANGO
The Gypsy Tango roils his Portuguese blood
Fires of passion leap into his brown eyes.
He asks, pulling at his collar, knees in bend,
“What were you listening to…”
Ah...caught him in vulnerable freeze.
A kaleidoscopic spin of a voluptuous skirt,
Hypnotic swirl of hair and beads -
The music stoked by a cyclonic pulse.
I reel in my most prized faithful husband.
The years keep him coming back
To the same fishing spot -
This is no sordid affair...
It is the cave of wonders.
May we never escape its chase
He’s got the hots for his Hungarian bride.
A szerelem egyszeruen csak szerelem. Ez egy leírhatatlan érzés.*
7/19/2019
*Love is just love. It can never be explained.
O acid! How you slither soft upon the skin and melt the marrow deep within,
but better that my bones are lost than my will,
which you seem to have such a strange interest in.
Where did you hail from, o acid?
What fiendish land spawned you and why did you depart
to assault my sharpest senses and constrict my paling heart?
Before you, I thought that conviction was the ease,
though now the very thought of it roils my stomach.
Control, in truth, the burden, for in short time one who keeps
secure lock upon themself will surely triumph
no matter the task;
this I surely know.
And if that, then I know you too, o fiend.
Acid drawn from the deepest pits of my own unchecked appetite.
The collapse comes from within,
and, from without, you return again.
26 April 2018
Imagine we trek,
To nature recede,
Trail wending and worn
Where pines scrape blue sky
And mankind’s unheard,
A river ahead,
Its turbulence roaring
Through forest’s calm shade
Cast by sun beaming down
And twinkling and glinting
Off water, pristine,
That roils and jumps
Off time-rounded rocks;
Oh! Nature’s grandeur
When we shed our garb
To frolic and splash
In backwash, ice-cold,
Then repose on the bank
To bask in bright sun
And returned, thus, to nature
In my arms you’ll find peace.
ON A CLOUDY RAINY DAY
By Roy Merritt
When I was a very young child yes way back then
I loved the sound of falling rain falling down on tin
The tin upon the roof of our simple home
The sound of the drenching rain instilling us with calm
And so relaxed I’d be as the rolling thunder booms
And echoes off the walls the dark clouds outside that loom
And it makes one want to sleep and lazily there recline
And wrapped up in comfort feel quite safe and soft sublime
You care not of the poverty that defines this your life
You care not of the endless toil the endless crushing strife
You only think of the solace of being snug inside
While outside the tempest roils and thunder clouds collide
And lightning bolts they strike like jagged frightful swords
The manifestation of the ancients and late conceived of lords
No matter if the hordes of Mars or Saint Michael's Angel Klan
Advanced against the wicked in defense of every man
You lay back and slowly, slowly drift away
And slumber there in comfort on a cloudy rainy day
And slumber there in comfort on a cloudy rainy day
Humankind has been grasping for knowledge from
the beginning, fear of the unknown was always forbidding.
Why does the wind blow?
Why does the sky crack open with light, sound and fury?
Why do the oceans roil with such anger?
How does the unknowing mind handle such things?
Gods is what we said. It’s gods that make all the unknown knowable.
This work for us, it help it makes sense.
As time went on we learned things, we learned why the wind blows,
why the sky cracks open with light, sound and fury,
and why the ocean roils with such anger.
As our knowledge grew the gods began to melt away, so now for many at least there is just one.
We have gathered up great knowledge over time and have eliminated many gods along the way.
One big question we’ve not yet answered is, were do we go when we die?
A great unknown to be sure. God is the answer for some.
It helps them make sense.
God is the one!
Related Poems