Foul Poetry

[Worm of Despite]

I recently finished a 40-page gobstopper of a story, and it's time to take a lighter path. Here come my poetic pokes and proddings--all tentative and rough, at best.




THERE

We watched the time, herded sound
We unfurrowed light, made deep
The passing of our place and being,

Never thinking we were; never
Asking for more
We waned, crested
As the sun, spreading
Night and shadow,
Wheeling
Wood and limb

A mesh of bird chirrups
And passing engines
A swish of silent branches
From across a pane
Of glass high, surrounded
By the stitch of cloud

We pounded them, made flesh
Our stone
We exalted form,
Losing constancy
We evaporated into sweet
Abjectness, clarity
Overreaching focus

What wanders there
Some amassing line
Or plane
There is but some
Geometry, some cascading hue

Some stalking white
Vain, unsound; some

II.
Wheel the day
Light the steps
Bars form,
Dissipate

Trees sunder nothing,
Walls long erected
Cast upon a roof;
Somewhere, there

[Worm of Despite]

ABSOLUTION

Clothe
The flesh
Chafe hands
Bent in prayer

Lend sighs
Call not man’s dominion
But some vague whisper
Breaking

Past belief
Wordless, it
Drags, creates
No flame

Some smoke,
Father;
Benediction
Hangs gray
By light that heaves,
Wanes

The voice applies no cry
Mind makes no appeal
Too bright to see
Too dark to speak

A word grown hoarse
From absolution; a word

II.
Thrush
In brown leaves
Beak bent
While others sing

Now two
Kick leaves
Two brown birds
While others sing

Too dark
To see; too
Bright to

Now is it apparent
Is it someplace else,
Some other wind
Is it of bone and flesh
May I place it
Or take its hand
For I have walked
Wordless
This windless space
Matches drag,
Create no flame

[Wyldewode]

I like your poetry: it is quite substantial, and I would like to read more. Keep writing, and posting!

[Worm of Despite]

UNTITLED

I ask forgiveness.
Yet the sea
Sends only fragments,
Sands

Words
Fill no chamber;
Words
Seal no bond
Eyes dwell

These eyes once pierced
Driftwood, made worlds
Of a shore

[Wyldewode]

Very nice!

[Worm of Despite]

EFFIGY IN WHITE

Lake turns, seeds the sands;
Oars bent, beat the waves
Lessons learned,

Unlearnt; ill-spoken
Held
Time was revered, placated

Naked in the frost of absolution
Need in years
Of loss

Judgment sways its lazing reeds
Judgment fills the mind

[Worm of Despite]

SOUNDS OF MAN’S DOMINION

Ageless benison;
Teach me now of man’s dominion
Teach me how to live the words I use

Were I holy,
I might find some other phrase
And recite her, render
And affix this scripture
But such was not my ken

Ageless!
Gods have delivered
A sound most holy
That music may not encapsulate
Nor the light slant upon

Trade now with words inadequate
Barter with the nervous sense;
Stricture tight the wet eyes
Bond, composed before thy birth,
Set for flesh beyond thy ken

Know now the path
Swell here, and recede
Now the sands will trace the tide

Walk now through the reeds
And seek sounds of man’s dominion

[Furls Fire]

Love your stuff, David

[Worm of Despite]

Always good to hear from you, Furls.

Don't you have a fantasy story posted here? I'm going to try to find it, whenever I can pry myself from this Star Wars novel (the Timothy Zahn ones/Thrawn trilogy).

[Worm of Despite]

THE STEPS

They walked the steps;

A knowing pace
Mute swells the rapids
Water clings

Life and rock

They wail with eyes, unfold
The beacon and its light
For theirs is a frozen union
Of worlds and of chaste dreams
They seek the scansion, the hour’s wilting
Place the time and wait for strains

Sound plaits, water drops
Men crouched, hunched—swaddled
In their brown, their

Coarse affair
Mingled breath

Eyes scan metal, follow proofs
And fill the space between
And smoke rises from ducts
And no one speaks or looks
Upon those who lost the will to live

They, who traded time
For thin ambition



KHAOSAN ROAD

Caught yellow, swelling
Made fog by light

Gamelans flow, dissonant,
And catch their tunes,
Paint middling

They hummed, hands clinging
But not taking;

And they asked
For its name and price

Cling; make ill the season
Clay of thunder, thrumming bass
Fake canvas, water

Two-stroke engine, handle bars
The sound its makes, “Tuk-tuk,”
Idles below a neon light, entrenched
By a lazing day, stretching

Frames lean on bodies,
Cling! Make the season drench
Its head in sweat, in beads
Of canvas; magnify human strokes

[Worm of Despite]

EUROPA

Adonai! Slink, rise
O’er former repose,
O’er waters; juxtapose
Canes and bars of
Mist
And weaving light

‘Tis moon that rakes
Thy name this night, Hosanna:
Music highest of spheres, arrayed
Through waves, swift forms

Play above and below
Against the joy
That formed this earth

Open intervals--
Consonant, passing
Ars nova

II.
O, shapes ineffable
Shapes most watery,
Depthless and heedless

Water rises, porous
And bubbling, dwindles
Bars of white, deep crystal
Watches, rides still
Through the moon of Europa

[Worm of Despite]

STRIDE

Stride by, stride
By black lengths
And call fugues, summon
Senseless names, searing river of
Deformed eyes and rills
Of stone and hollow water—
Chaste ice and fog

Bring me closer to this
That I may remove myself
Bring me unto the toiling
Where words are conjoined
And mean nothing

“they share lengths”
“They are accustomed to black lengths.”
“Tell me why I am.”
“Give name to flat earth, usurp
Seed”

Rooms and numbers sail on,
Create frills, light; meshed
Tapestries bring closer, yea
Even now, ever nearer

Flat wanderers, usurpers!
Planar spheres meet
What for so long
Souls have eluded

[Worm of Despite]

The poems in this post predate all the ones before it, and they're also a part of this volume. Enjoy!


AIM

Of old again
Was new

I
Of old

II
Grief
Distills the heart;

Passion wells the breast,

Bleeding day and night.

I praise thee
And absolve thee
God spoke the truth.

III
Lean years,
Encumbered by moments

Here lies silence,
Crushed by desire
None may know it,
Only behold it

One passes o’er it
As the wind does topography

Read without reason;
Whisper it like Psalmodies

Faith is not bound here!

There is no aegis
Or protecting crevice

IV
Contrition
Has been waged,
Such that bodies
Speak not to minds
And voices
Weigh not the dark

I ask you—
Reply
I feint and strain
To hear words I knew

Night seethes,
Air flushed,
Raw and taut yet

Its throat receives no rain

The boughs creak

Now and then
Silence pervades,
Each measure
Measureless

I ask you
But do not incite
I tell
But ne’er insist

Paper is torn, made
Scraps
Somewhere there is no voice,
No land without human tongue

It shifts
As does the next item
It speaks,
Tells thoughts in drifts


GRAND SCALE

War without Thought
Peace Beyond reason

WAR WITHOUT THOUGHT
PEACE BEYOND REASON

I retained
Ever
As rain on aluminum

That tough, fibrous rod
That was awareness
Slid

And I knew
Not that I did not want
To know I had slept
In His shadow,
Cursing the shapes
Of dark and light

I knew without hearing

I turned to His name

2

I counted night,
Shunning silence

I followed rills of thunder,
Watched them draw and scale,
Rinsing clean arpeggios

One follows it,
Counting nothings;
One is bent
Upon a coursing tension
Waiting for absolution—
Waiting

For her gait to spill forth.

It danced
Inconceivable were its patterns
I dared not divide

One does not seek it
But is sought out
One is assaulted
By a million unfamiliar nodes

3

An inconstant pattern
I dared not divide

4

Who are you
I am.
I don’t understand
And that is your gift.
I—He intoned,
His tongue cleaving as mine

‘You are limitless space,
Given no answers; both walk
In the same breath and breadth
Though we speak from distance’

That is the Answer?
No. But one.
And are you God?
Am I a human word? Yes,
Though I stray closer
To Grief than God

I distill the heart,
Well the breast with passion;
I am thy praise
And absolution
I am what spoke the truth.


SHRIKE

A chime sounded
On the circle of the air

But not before
A mind constructed
And sought its placing

2
In the nadir of a thought
A grim shrike
Had amassed clumps of straw

‘Twould serve a grave

It had been a kind creature,
Pecking when it strayed
Allowing choice
Where it must be made

And it is the hour
In which time weeps
Sonorous,
Forming shores or delving caves
That might be a grave

3
Gathering
Straw
The shrike crowed

It sat reticent
Washing monuments
It wept as wind,
Reeking change

It had been a kind master
Allowing choice


ROLLED DREAM

Redress me, O Gods;
Ends no longer mean;
Drab wear these fleets

Attire my skin
To raise and rave
A sweet, old smoky praise.

Purr, hands;
Smooth out delusion;
Roll out thy sparse and finite!

O, landscape enfolding
Thy shadowy longing
Ships and dreams we’ve razed

[Worm of Despite]

Back to new stuff.


APPELLATIONS OF LIGHT

His word laced aspic,
Ached in summer’s swill,
Enhanced a pasture’s light,
Flowed up and over edges, fragmented
The fullness of time, spoke
A universe of white noise; of stalks
Receding

Open notes, once dissonant
Half-formed:
A soundless center, all bedecked
In wind, forgetting: a seamless structure
Jogged this path; now only eyes,
Reading

[Worm of Despite]

FLAT EARTH, A PROPHECY

TO.OVR.PROPHET.MALOWYVES.
WHOSE.WORD.ENTRENCHED.
OUR.MIND.WITH.LIGHT.

Weep with me; bury soon
Free thy life from time
We are not the chosen—
But paper, hanging, neither known
Nor implied: dragging hours,
Record not our eyes

Eve upon eves, twist
With weight, heady resolve
Clip and twine thy light
Branch with song and threnody

Vision accosts, rows and rows
Pluck and wait
Words belong, teeming

I.
A hand,
Slick with blood,
Found the railing
Still fresh, coursing
A sweet background, a
Conflagration; two lines,
Like statues, sat on either side

Centered, the light
Had whistled, had
Reached a blaze that
One might not stare
Or consider too long

That they might jump
And enter black.

II.
I chased the spirits frail,
Hailing all surcease
Yet no line gave supplication
No tower spoke my name

He was Cerberus, three-headed
Wanderer of flat earth!
He turned red and vexed,
Ripped furrows and holes

O, earth! Flat earth!
Perch motionless
Crease nameless

HERE! Time undone;
She bends her neck, drinks
Glory; shatters epithets

Rue with me, flatness of the earth
Erase thy hours, trenchers and beaded rows
Time all till all is done.

Every minute flees, meaningless
Every fruit heaves

III.
A rumour spanned
Till there was no Logos;
Flat planes eluded
Machine and time
Till they hearkened
To glyphs and names

Eluding depth,
Matrices glissando
Wept shapeless, nearly white

Pieces stumble
To yet another wheel

Some have not joined
Some pray to machines

IV.
Far below, Malowye casts
A sunken sheen on cars in streets,
Houses warm with chiding lamp;
Green trance of cameras, wires,
Poles wrung together

Names became numbers, numbers God,
Present, vibrant: sequences and digits
Could be arranged in such a way
As to know the date of birth, your hours

V.
AWAKE; eyes stare;
Cold orbs, cooling
Until hands rested
On lateral lines

Miss—what do you miss the most?
Burnt leaves—miss that smoke smell.
It reminded me
Of some memory

Before birth
The earth’s raw blood
Had been drawn, purified.
Burned things marched: derelict cars,
Hot sand, jungles
Of stillness—gray spirals like a cut trunk.
Trees were torn, columns
Sundered

Wind, always present;
To have no life; to hold
What seems to pass through;
Not quite death, but

VI.
Footsteps pass, spirits dwell
Here is one you knew

Far too many, too many
To hold the seal
The sun casts anew

Voices peal; none
Make sense; all lean
One upon the other

“Don’t give me this.”
“I had one.”
“And you were mine.”

Diverse are their sighs
The seal

VII.
The rood amassed,
Plying soft, untouched grass
Revealed, scouring
Inside water, falling

I dwelt inside
Water falls
I move within

Forgive transgressions
Though my sins
Will span one million years

Cloaked in blue
It twists to white,
Faces you
And I can hear
No voice at all
And I am where
The water falls

VIII.
And echoes speak
In ancient time

And was the rood reading aloud
From forms of wind
And gusts that flee from me
List, continents bend

And dream
Of scythes and promised form
Rise distant!

O spikes, thy flash fires an orb
Whose fire cannot mask
This memory riding memory
This seal of time and threnody
This weal, this wealth, this keep
Which withholds our cherished seat
That held in walls what no man holds

Let none see the time
Nor be the name
Nor bleed fire from an orb
That fire cannot mask

And none will build
Jerusalem; none sense
Or rue or bend
The lens of time
And none may sweat
A bated tense

IX. THE PROPHECY

Terrible is the dragon
That the light, arrayed
Might not strike his voice
Nor assuage his fire

A new age revealed in timorous glory
On shattered earth encaged,
Seething raw, impassioned
A new day is bleating, alien

[Worm of Despite]

NO SOUND

Lay like light;
Swell and smoke; God
Has fooled them again.
These eyes extend, fill all plains
Like swords on tapestry

You told them, quite plainly:
I have unchanged thy skies;
Have trembled, breathed,
Awaked and writhed;
Retracted, slid away

I would not change; would
Bar no word; no sound but what
Man shall hear
No sound but what man shall hear

II.
I am no more talking to thee
Than an alchemist before mortar
Before orphans raking gruel
Aye, sirrah, suck now
This mud like attar,
Like lacquered youth;

Its must taste sweet,
This simple squirming; to thee
‘Tis like all sense striving
Before the one you call He

But as it were, ‘tis I holding now
Thy suzerainty ‘pon its sway,
For I alone employ a message replete
With misgivings, O, heady longings

As the chambers of a metal sheath,
These words point, raze like the rod
Of Jove, undo you as they did me
For you will not see the fatal volley
You will sink all thought, weigh passion;
Narrow, fasten

Soon pale nape, then crushed ash,
Desiring no touch but withering flesh;
And you will see no ground,
Naught but darksome washing
Say as you will
Say as long as you will
But there is no sound
No sound but man’s

Words flout, convulse;
Eyes breach silence, reek vitriol

[JazFusion]

I really like your stuff. Your voice is distinct.

You speak of volumes. Have you been published?

[Worm of Despite]

I really like your stuff. Your voice is distinct.

You speak of volumes. Have you been published?

Thanks! Keep reading. I seem to be hitting a creative spurt these days.

As far as publication: I've had a few poems chosen for my college's literary magazine, but that's it. My volumes exist only on my hard drive.


THE FALL

What is the Fall
Blank effulgence; face of man
Walk alone by this swell
Measure squalls, quelling thoughts
Cry with reason for moment’s dignitary

Some hold these few measurements
As though holding nothing

Wide springs the man of thought
Fullness tries to attain flesh,
Seeking only bone, digging dirt
And finding hands are melded there
And cannot raise the arms or break
The air with cries or shape a walk
Or speech once traded idly

He falls, glad
At least to see

2

June
White, bleached June
Speckled corners, dapper drapes
Cold and black
Yet quite sharp

A spright proposition
Handles itself
Harmonious, fulminating
Aegis of laughter, like daggers
Wafts and seeds new curtains
And seals in tinctures down bent,
Envisaged fate—down prolonged
Gripping fingers, lacking themselves,
Lacking that quiet breathing, that deepened
Sadness; that organ swell, never quite—ever
Quite nigh to truth; but nearing dust
Nearing dead mythology

No coordination; no given persona
At last he is glad
At last glad to see

3

The tomb lay,
Convinced it need no dust
But in this idea is spotless
Try as it might
It may not dirty itself
Try as it might become itself
It is but a satyr of pleasure

But a single deviation
Like an isle dreaming
Raids the pungent air
And beats like breakers

Mind
Put together
He does not mind—
Articulates but cannot find
The sea or resting mass
That his speech falls—falls
And meddles; prays for medley,
For rising glass—resurrection—

[Worm of Despite]

POETRY

Below the hymn and lee
Sits sharp detritus,
Twisting with its pearled embrasure
The calm fates of an ebon gaze,
Long lashed by thoughts so fruitless
That night-time did cave
With dread forests, trills of the grave
And may trill again with thought’s preponderance

Like a lathe, a trace,
This heart's frotress
Is left to dirt where once paved
By the lee it lists; now raging,
Now abetting, dirtied
Between somnolence and sonority

Perch, you filch; you robber-baron
Of words; you runner of language,
You shadow by the bier; shed like water
All meaning, and sway as lanterns, essaying
A wave that never comes quite near
But touches only a little; and in that breathless space
A little is more than enough
And speaks of globes crashing sound
And speaks of sound without light
And light without focus

But it is here in that loose pearl
That demon-song in heaven’s whirl
That music unrecorded; that light
That has no name

[Worm of Despite]

NO SPEECH

Constant line, form of brick
Weight beneath the page
Lapsed in I and I in you, in closing
Footfall like each word, transfixed
In meaning, we gnaw our feeling
And press air

Trees and pigments
Exhale in constant bloom
Of light, that soup for eyes
That drill of sense, that drunk,
So labored breath, full of flesh
And counting distance, close
By curtain and named by draft,
Reeling in shadow, feeling its own chill;
This blanching, clenching girding of one’s self
In air loose with curling flesh, escaping
Standing—asking—who is there, who
In dim-grey hall or dour field,
In upright, skeletal branch

Count distance, close curtain
Name a draft or reel in shadow
Clip this branch, adjust a tray
Yea! Matter ripples, animates
A field in mass and form of brick,
A world’s pages, a lapse in eye, no constant
Or inconstant closing; now sound on each
No lisp or word or variance of feeling

But not to speak; but to press