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.
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.
London growls under the tread
of diesel driven dreams.
A stork visits,
an attic full of discarded toys.
White mice sleep in pajamas,
made of childish nightmares.
Barges reek still, just as when,
sweat was as common as dirt.
A window in Baker Street,
opens to let pipe smoke out,
it uncoils in the air
like a left-handed genie.
Meat mongers return to their,
gore-soaked cradles
before the dawns leery light.
The city is a fable,
there is fuel oil seeping,
through tunnels and runnels,
where entrenched gutter snipes
lie low and wait.
Denizens' crabwalk
along Regents Street
barking Chinese commands
at oppressed corgis.
Stately towers are pressure washed,
until they shed a dark sunlight
that fractures ferrous raindrops.
Tenements sink under the weight,
of red carpets
until the blood flows
out of them.
London by night,
is a veneer,
a crust
of low expectations.
You walk through my soul without
removing your shoes. No matter how
much I see you it's not enough so I
ultimately I lose.
You track into my soul loneliness
and grief. I want to see you so badly
but I can't get any relief.
I have runnels on my heart where you
run through so fast, why does every
moment we have together seem not
to last?
I think the problems is with me because
I just can't get enough, loving you with
your time constraints make it very tough.
I dream of you for hours and see you for
10 minutes. And I get so damn hurt
because it feels like your heart just
isn't in it.
But I can't just quit you and walk away
You're addictive my darling so I'm forced
to stay.
©SamHarty
He is out to spread his tentacles
In the face, of combative obstacles,
And dying to end through a tackle
Any unacceptable spectacle
Between The Rickety and The Ramshackle:
Busy roads he’d started their channels,
Hateful robbers sealing off their tunnels,
Corrupt judges replacing with panels,
Supported subsidy showing with funnels,
Filling stations without towels obliging flannels
Bottled water for user of runnels
His love for dogs at their kennels...
Determinedly spreading his tentacles,
All the wrongly jailed breaking their shackles!
That evening it rained.
He was glad the diva was dry up there on the warmly lit stage.
The cold rain found every opening in his casual attire,
rivulets ran in runnels seeking out soft parts.
He decided he disliked Puccini outdoors.
He imagines that the dark haired beauty,
the one now singing, chest heaving,
offers him shelter beneath those ample bosoms
she looked the kind of lady that would.
An hour later he swooned away,
wheezing in Tosca's arms.
A note pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off.
Legs are a late harvest of the indigent.
Their limbs carry a visual poverty
long after the body is plucked.
In a small room, I separate
muscle groups, filter large blood vessels
from fibrous runnels.
My scalpel seeking out fascial planes.
The leg is devolving to scraps,
yet ingrained in the tissue,
I sense residual shades of a life.
Seaside postcards and old photographs,
war ribbons and yellowed newspaper clippings.
The gray flesh retains its memories.
There’s a wife behind his knee,
bone whittling winds have not erased her features,
her youthful form still entwined
around ashen ligaments.
A child climbs up from an ankle bone,
as a sinewy plasma -
it has no substance of its own,
but borrows and gathers a varicose presence.
Sights and scenes invest
a limbs mangled landscape.
Images that can’t be cut away
by living hands.
Some imagine they dissect a limb,
but I turn bloodless pages,
read images once squirreled away,
that now form these sinews
of a journey’s end.
I have forged
light of distant
stars into galaxies
scattering diamonds trailing
meteor dreams sweeping
empty nights clean
of flame bursting
into a million
shards of white-
hot carbon poured
down runnels to
hell from where
voices clamor for
air and slag
burns fissures into
stygian voids of
inference pulled into
the vortex of doubt
shimmering in particles of light
suspended from
whence we came
to where we
shall return
On the subject of an unwanted water feature...
Water, water, everywhere
In rushing rivers down the wall
As loud as grand Niagara’s Fall
In to the Wobbly Bog
Pouring, pouring, endlessly
Insistent flow of running stream
Unwanted runnels carved through dream
Swelling the Wobbly Bog
Soaking, soaking, soggily
The puddle deep, the muddy ground
‘Tis said there was a postman found
Drowned in the Wobbly Bog
Dropping, dropping, gravity
Bleaching brick with scale of lime
On damp of wall the mark of time
Shadows the Wobbly Bog
Gushing, gushing, noisily
Unbalancing the Feng and Shui
No wind to dry the churning sea
Flooding the Wobbly Bog
Madness, madness, sanity
By white noise of incessant drip
Is sunken like a sodden ship
Wrecked in the Wobbly Bog
Misty, misty, spookily
By moonlight come the boggy sprites
With mischief and their tiny lights
Haunting the Wobbly Bog
Wishing, wishing, hopelessly
That some good knight with tool or sword
From Aster or the Water Board
Might conquer the Wobbly Bog
Watching, watching, grumpily
The paint that never dries; dismay
As Wiltshire waters pour away
In to the Wobbly Bog
by Gail
A river folds upon its banks
with waters deep and cold.
Its molten flow rolls endlessly
from aquifers untold.
It ripples over ancient stones
placed when the earth was cast.
Each sheared and formed the bedrock's course
'neath outflows bold and fast.
Swift currents know of time's slow ebb,
and legends never told.
Its surface gleams beneath the sun
of sagas being scrolled.
The sky above has seen the work
of time's artistic hand,
and knows the melding and the strength
of water and the land.
An ancient bending vein of life
connected with the wold,
that shields enigmas deep as time
in runnels which enfold.
Roll on past hill and fertile land
'til deltas cease your course.
The river and the woodlands speak
of life's primordial source.
Nov. 2014
Common Verse
I awake, dull crusted in shadows,
to the swelling roar of hard rain on shingles
wetly dripp'd down rusted gutters,
air thick with cool moisture,
ozone sharp razor clean,
somehow, the sod grew a deep green coat in one night
as dogwoods shed blossoms like fragrant dandruff,
when did spring arrive?
my mind still bundled in deep winter time,
ghosts of snowfields, untouched by sun,
blanket my mood in a stiller time
now shattered by detonations of life
melted by pollen infused with wind
scintillate bands of light burn laser bright
through pregnant clouds rain gray
beams play like shining faeries on the sill
as a weird biology compels me to arise
rush headlong onto verdant lea
dervish twirl'd and humid breathed
but lightswitched it's gone
thunderheads roll like playground bullies
smearing runnels on the window
dogwood prism'd to a streak
as I shrink back to a pillow
smelling faintly of grass.
Celestial weeping - angel tears,
pouring from Arcadian spheres,
liquid sunshine from Gods own eye,
I kiss the rain as clouds drip dry.
Rich pearly drops - heavenly bliss,
quench the fire of my souls abyss,
crystalline rills that gush from high,
I kiss the rain as clouds drip dry.
Gentle runnels - watery grace,
baptise my body and my face,
raising my head up to the sky,
I kiss the rain as clouds drip dry.
BRIEF ROMANCE
Fell for a Scottish girl long ago. Pretty as a picture, but
Heart as cold as an empty Edinburgh street on a wet
January Monday morning, when the chiseled
Craigleith sandstone blackened by smoke
Repels the rain from the Forth,
And the steep roofs pour
Water into the runnels
Down the cobbled
Streets.
Dinosaurs waiting for stone to erode,
their skeletons covered, uncovered again,
iron that's forgotten the blood where it flowed
and phosphorous leached from a primitive brain--
delicate sabers of soft-stepping cats
enshrouded in shimmering oceans of sand,
strata of relative sediment that's
concealing the bones of the earliest man--
visible traces of numerous beasts,
the sum of Earth's creatures forever enshrined--
signs of their passing won't slow in the least
the rivers and runnels of ongoing time.
"We loved the earth, but could not stay" ~ Loren Eiseley~
ALONG
loch-studded moorland
bogs and runnels
and o'er the Highland Pass
antennae alert
I'll twist the wind
to
feed
my
Bonny
Lass
Sub Categories
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