this is all of it


A stab in the dark (for one trick pony)




Cold grass sways their bold necks,
indifferent to the season's grim tale,
too short to be told more than once
a long, unsteady night.

The sounding drums of war.
Bleeding, bleeding...
The reckoning of days.
The hollow eye.

A bird above the barren froth
sings of grass in crystal silence,
calling no more.
Families and trees, all gone.

Fathers long before us
waited for their turn to fill the gap.
The sun in a sea of salt.

Seep through weeping autumn
with gales and gusts,
with weird tools of dark mystery.

Old man hears bells of sunken ships
calling in a weeping mist called memory
if there only was a book of codes.

Thrusts of pain spear Old man's hope
of ever joining joy's magical
master switch
with its ascendance
into a clear cerulean forever.

"Speak you bloody tongue
of all that matters;
speak of all things unsaid,
unheard of amongst beasts,
hovering in halls as yet
unmeasured by eyes."

Leaves and old age fold,
as they should and must,
the soaked soil
knows the downward direction,
the falling spells his name.

This he knows,
that in between this
and what really goes on
there are eyes
dying to get closer.

Driven by a heavy toll
chimney sweeps might allow,
Old man forges day's insanity
into the one true sword
cold nights insist upon.

Never promised by tomorrow,
his scarecrow fingers beckon.
Mortally wounded
he falls short at midnight.

Once milky skin
embraced his dreams
with warm anxiety,
gulls hung above the sea.

He is bruised remains,
eyes falling, leaves.
Earth's dark, exhausted bowl
carries his tenderness.

Dreams fill his days,
sleep erases all hope;
a sullen mound, even more so.
The wind crawls
like a quiet sarcoma patient
over grassy hills in desperation,
hollering at midnight
with an intent beyond the stars:

"Leave me not to time's device,
to the sound of seashells on slabs;
let gentle perish be my hollow mass,
all my broken feet will know."

Measuring all dark hills
a cerulean horizon commences.
Old man purges the passing
with one simple word
and leaps at wind's revision from trees
that take and give him different eyes.

Memories of an old town
move through the wet woods
of bare November's gaze.

Supple ice rolls across hills,
dares the thought to see
hidden memory waves
of lost childhood summers.

Clean, white water once
ran transparent
under these stones;
feathery ferns called
for a viridian indulgence;
birds hid in green, soporific shadows.
Bright chlorophyll
rolled like dark thunder.



2

Saturated in a circular perfection,
not yet pale in a perfect winter sky,
the determined moon wages
yet another way to inherit.
Sparrows fold their day in merit,
there are tales of feathery fames.

Once the grass was tall and free,
slow nights carried windy messages
across a perfectly curved sky.
Now the grass is hurriedly trimmed short
for the final, concave hour
with its mercury motion down.

Bold, defying cries of departing birds
roll across still roadside tombs.
Old man finds no plea.
Never again shall his prayers
fall in love so easily
with crude saxophones on the radio.

Regal rises above hushed trees,
bare with a dark, stiff tongued itching
in a night was belonging.
He has known that coming
long before these words.

Wild wings, a floating elegance,
ride dark water's slow goodbye;
songs of the grave jelly fish
break in long time coming.
Abandoned ferries ruptures,
expecting snow's illumination.

He waits for darkness
in leaps and recoils,
unprepared for the sound
bass players can make;
there are stiff remembrance reeds
in a sea of horns.

The eye, heavy with night,
colors all that might be;
I rises, yet falls heavily
where many an I walks,
continuing the warped distance
from the here to another now.

Tall night fallen with dervish snow.
Green grass groomed in the white,
in an icy tell tale spell grandeur,
beckoning to sparrows in bushes,
cringing in I dark suspension.

When darkness toll in rooms of surgery
he discovers a new see saw syllable,
his hands are signs in a timeless tale.
Slow shadows lost to opportunity;
crossroads transmute, wither and leave.

There are winds that can mold a heart of snow;
white birches can bow, twig strung,
to sky's dark encounter with no more.
Suburbia, evening's dark companion,
abandons misery and runs for lost causes.

Children's voices frozen in formalin
over bedsides where dead visions call
for pale stories to continue
with wintry fantasies and laughter.

A breath of irrevocability
cloaks the dying of the day;
images of ancient ships
sail into a long goodbye sun.
Are there new pages to turn?

A man in the city
howls into the heedless night.
There is a old shortage of cedar.

Dog tired man bones
slowly rot into a mire mass,
a hollow perpetuation.
Smug charlatans hide
in dark deeds of pain,
behind stiff cloths demanding
a silly ceremony.


3

Whirling within limited existence, aroused,
crawling across weathered city centers,
Old man foresees all he is not
and dares the rest to find its own peace
with what no longer is possible.

Itchy, incorrigible ways cringes
at the touch of the one word,
pointing at him. He is lost.
His defiant smile breaks,
his intentions are hung
on long silent considerations.

The sky is a sea-fading fish bone,
a struggle amongst wiry clouds
for winds to interpret or change
the fate of lost men calling
with their pockets full of images,
grinning over dark, watery graves.

Tangled in a warm hide,
breathing softly beneath contortions,
Old man dares not to fall
into night's justified wrath,
he dares not invoke origin
when darkness sieges all ending days.
Overlapping moments of slow now rolling
fall unexpectedly into his lap.

Old man's love is a merry icon,
a slow dissolve into soft cries
prying into the delving;
a muted call, fading into dawn,
when there is no other.

His story is a bony tail,
a symphonic patriot at play.
He disbands and displays dark glory.
It is time he moulds,
time that will not play
with crude clay.

Who will dare dark incitements,
flights no hidden man can heed?
Old man feeds no flare, no fight,
nor what bare needs can prey upon
in nights that bleed for no more.

Thus he calls the pending year
by all fear night concludes in cries;
abandoned kites run with small stars,
soar in a wondrous wake.

It is nothing more than a glimpse,
a voyage of no consequence,
winding its way from here
to a potential said so
and all the way back again.

Drab stories of delusion fall short at dusk.
Frenzied voices from sub zero continents
slide down dark moon's pale matter
in utter looking for
to meet what does not come.

Colliding carelessly with
salty wood-words of winter,
black crows, with feathery bets,
beat collectors to the meltdown.

Food is the final curtain call.
Old predator blinds
that hang broken and vicious
in ways of time's neglect,
in chains and no peace.

Oxygen is more
than just a lethal breath.
Tuition so much more
than just coercion.


4

Old man of war and solitude
finds himself armed and ready
with old righteous howls
and recently dried bones.

The power of money
makes for a long term claim
of all that tags along.
Hypochondriac men
claim dominance by default.

Glossy shadows of power
feed on pain's illusion,
focuses on self imported
aspects of visibility.

Daring is a glorious move
with no need for blood
or religious fervor
to defy the order of deeds.

Old man walking
sees flaws at the fundament,
a keep safe illusion
and mind's complication.

A tumbling today, no direction.
A melting-point leaping
as he, as it were, hoped to canalize
the potential of a lame future
into pools of consideration.

Old man is wild intention
bleeding weary night goodbye,
he is too bold to be daft or even stale,
too rapt to pale or fold.
He is shift change from cruel tears
into one more Good night.

The sound of sirens echoes
with fractal consideration
in halls where danger falls short
at mercury midnight's
bright titan call for moderation.

Never before did a whispered moon
rip at the core of mortal serendipity
with such a definite intent,
never before had it occurred to him
that the haste of days is hereditary.

The waning moon has spent
all expensive emissions
on cellular mass calls for dawn.
Bright nimbus of winter distortion
warps distance into a frosty glass,
where drops softly freeze
into subtle oblivion.

At the dull hour of leaving,
when the light of other days
imbues all he can see,
when being breaks into longing
and matter makes a million goodbyes,
each a sweet bead in a lost rosary,
it is then defeat is bearable.

Parting is a billion suns
bursting into flames
in a single piece of dry wood;
conceding is to swell in that light
with each breath of air.
Cause has no other origin.

Old man turns in his sleep
just before next day
beckons at new horizon.


5

Old man downs cloaked severity
at daybreak's first call
on his way to close his heart and tale
a cold, flawless, winter day.

Burning all bold forever's
beneath a cold private sky
he cries for the lost children,
burning in books lost.

Bushes are etched in winter nudity,
exuding bright flittering clouds
of warm, feathery life.

Tears of irrevocability
ices a cold sea
where the mighty mackerel hums.

He must forego all masters of oblivion
on his way to the sea.
A billion tears have flowed in vain.

Old man's final call will soon
roll fatal life's condition
and nothing but broken tail lights
will guide him concluding his day.

Slandering seas will die,
– before breakfast –
in a temporal disgust, lust
and a slow burning;
jelly fish in contempt.

It is persistence
that holds him fretting
and falling.
The falling could have kept him
from staring at the end.

"Good night weary wisdom's fading.
Tonight no one can play elusive
with a smile of pale stars.
Shadows will not play."

Death has no further say
when it falls into broken night;
haunting rites and intangible ends
give wind to voices lost in blame,
lament and salt.

Time is cruel at midnight's falling.
Water puts shanty towns to sleep
with shimmering waves
and moonlit skeletons dancing.

Theft is located somewhere
between the third and forth vertebra,
signaling a lost tail.
Prostitution goes for money
while translucent skin
tells another tale.

Codes of conduct define what he is
as he materializes in what he sees.
It is time to sleep.


6

Elevators rising far beyond
the wanted floor
turn into blue subways
with female drivers
shifting into new tracks
every time you look.

The phone rings.
You are in a tunnel.

Cellophane thoughts
of a certain cerulean sentiment
unfold a hollow multiplicity.
The old man is barely here.
Who then to challenge his appearance?

Night after night he scratches at origin,
dares specters to dance with him.
Night after night his proverbial nerve
longs for love's flickering sensation
a brief fleeting moment.

Soaring through the entire all of it
he embraces the irrevocable.
Speed is a lethal companion.

All possessions will transform
into bedrock, blood,
into bones, a dreadful integrity,
a hesitant praise of dust.

The city moves cadres of dead eloquence
down the streets
where catafalques of lost innocence
roll like nothing else.


7

Torched by the fire of oblivion
Old man longs for water
in late rush hour cries
for opium and hindsight,
for an ultimate here.

Memory is a last legacy
balancing on a sea of words
with gravity falling with images
only condition may direct.
The other speaks.

"Long live extreme and august anger
uniting roaming packs
that crave mass destruction
with words of blind dead want
and swords that flash
in no eloquent fashion."

Hot gain is far more exciting
than the anguish of poverty.
A dark heart speaks loud.
On unpaved streets
you are infamous.

"Long live the voices
that pray for blood,
unforgiving instigators
of fear and cold obliteration."

Winter began with a blue gentleness,
dancing soft circles of integrity;
the peripheral encouraged mild control
as a matter of being in charge.

All that he is and all that he does
leaps at the touch of snow.
Morning is merely the name
of a new white intentions.

Glowing in insidious times,
suspended like herons,
turning curved, beady beaks
toward a final surf,
Old man dives into here now
for a glimpse of harnessed light.

Calamities toll like shadows
in the eye of the witness.
Weight fills his recollection
with more regret.

"Cry you hollow man;
the wind is in your shoes.
No one will follow you;
the echo of circular water
is only sand in your tumbler."

Daring dark day's profundity
Old man slows down,
facing inevitability.
Day's daring process collides
with intention to express;
the dance subsides,
what must be said is lost.

A moment caught
in the middle of history
with the best of all intention.
The distance between what has been
and what will come
carries his first name.

Webs within circles of distraction
often hold his attention
as day follows moon
on its way to forgetfulness.
The electric night,
baleful with harsh light,
is a watchful eye.

A dog does his smile,
burns all his intentions.
The lights the hall is he
when a fuse goes.
Never looking back
he finds the wind irresistible.



8

Deeds cringe at dark wood's end,
slither and die over leafy lips.
He hesitates,
although this particular crossing
is of no value.
Nevertheless, there are phantoms
attacking his conscious effort.

It is here he might meet what is
without a lazy cloak of misrepresentation,
here, where the tell tale custom officers
cast anesthetized spells over shadows.

Never before has he been fraught
with a rendezvous of this kind,
binding fractured perception
into one single moment.
There is no other touch.

Scavenging scholars of grey intent
bleed across pillared temples of greed,
over crossbows and sugared lust,
dusty images of what will never be
with purple words in disarray.

Elements of understanding
has to do with keys and clouds,
with a state of origin. Birthed mortals
need to breathe in the wild.

Tall nights bear neither snow nor rain,
someone plays the piano.
Voices float like white winter clouds
over any possible objection.

"I do believe in the sound of words,
the spoken, the impossible,
the mad glimpses of belonging,
the electric flashes
between my bedroom poles,
the taut viridian wood
where a moon is shifting."

The wind, the air he moves
as intentions move him
– highways and wasteland –
cannot be collected in jars.

Slow is his purpose
following maps of old.
Steeped in ways of imaginary wings,
he is intense, in bold leaps he jumps
over old lost lovers.

Old man lost in age
finds the night to his liking.
There is no other.


9

Startled by silly words silently soaring
over snow's dark, fine cover,
Old man finds himself in disarray.

A host of long lost images plunges
through an early windy presence
demanding to be named and dear.

The sea rocks the day
into echoes that fly the light,
endlessly rolling over a dark below.

He stands by water,
horizon walks long distance
into a gulls cry.

A Sunday morning bell;
eyes raced are still.
Glorious peace that eats the heart!
With all that and no regret
he no longer covets.

For a moment he dangles;
a bait for the ambitious
and the ignorant.

No sweet aroma no starfish
surfing dark water's curve.
Death has no say here,
fooled by another charm.

The cod tolls for all men,
the squid falls,
grey clouds of shrimps
and wet clams
– with weepy secrets
in the foolish eddy –
fall in into yesterdays darkness.


10

Dark deeds wring sweaty hands
where another man just would say:
"It costs to harbor a volatile spirit
under a capricious skin! Flee!"
Like a smoldering fire at midnight
cold December crumbles.

Night abducts his lost frenzy,
the seeing puts mist into his sleep.

The math of the coroner's result
beds with the very best of our age,
cheered on by the lazy,
by the eyes of the confused in sleep.

Tonight all content is external.
The speed of the thermometer
is certainly of no avail to he
who no longer is alive,
when there is no physic content.

Winter breaks chilly seals
with lights from singular fires.
The touch, soft and discrete,
speaks of a very old man in a cave.

A ray of hope that cringes,
that eats light and stops
moments before winter strays.

Drab sarcophaguses of night
slide into flake white openings;
a dark eye, lost,
feeds on diatribes. There is no solace.

Who calls for more when it is dark?
Shadows of guilt flicker in rooms
where no house wolf ever reigned.
The air smells of more snow.



11

Definitions of a see-through
whirl-like tainted rainbow
over dark cities
fills the early hour rising.

Indigested ceremonies of division
plunge without scope into lethargy,
talking nonsense by the window.

The conclusion of a flickering loss
winds a ticking heart
minutes before a clear sky cracks
with the ink of old.

The end of an imperfect day sinks
below what is left
of aspiration and hope,
loss is dragged down deserted streets.

Brave intentions fold in sleep,
dark dreams approach at midnight.
What is gained will pass like mist,
these evaporating figures of logic.

Swirl you origin of unending watery curves,
you cause of bright flickering reflections
over bastions of no faith
in a ragged coastline struggle.
Waves fettered at midair,
merging in a wet lucid goodbye.

Singeing "what ifs" curl and die,
faces are slow in inevitability.
Weakness is a common name
when liquid is cheap
and illegal opaque essences
hide inside blue tonsils.

The ice vans break down at dawn,
forfeiting all motherly intent.
Planetary dreams surface
in a careful surveillance.
Who sees the doorway?
Who baits continuance with precision?

Indecent spreads of desire
drift like smoke over old wisdom.
Genetic belongings are more
than a physical drive to run
for uncharted marshes
where songs burst into tears.

Slow back burning trains,
rail-sounding Indian Tablas;
he bets his long lost tale
on the one night.

Cautious beneath a mask
of social charm
he talks freely by the bar.

Daring the limited to move
is about all
one breath can muster
at a very temporary station.

Threads of a new comprehension
pull at everyday's withering say;
the silent agreement that comes
point carefree fingers.

No blame on him, though he stands to lose.
He is grief and sorrow.
He is not tomorrow.

Night might not find him another lover
silently turning different intentions
into different inevitabilities.
He might not survive,
though fidelity flies with the best.




12

Teenage girls, scrawny
like unfed geese in the spring,
float through harbor attention
on their way to blue ocean's loss
with only a smile to support them.

White froth fills the gate,
terms are not yet drawn.
What dark there is
murmurs in anticipation.

A thrust breaks the oily mirror,
A buoy shines in silver light.
Not yet immortal is all these girls
can ask for.

Cranes in the old man's view
roll in a continuous aftermath.

Offspring flutters in chemic confusion,
seraphs and historic delusions,
all unfurl separate uncertainties
in nights with no further say.

"Must the theory we all name days
be caught in midsentence
before what is can be implied?"

A leaded invoice fell by the gate,
there will be no more fiasco
at the end of this night.
Ships are moored.

There is more to the one hand
holding on to waves.
There is no reason why
an orphan cannot hoist a flag.




13

Weird tools lend themselves easily
to lost cures and high lore,
they can play in waves of blue dreams
where saxophones of old walk in line,
murmuring nonsense at midnight,
pointing at mislaid directions,
baffled by the mages of infinity.

Words of substance flock at the foothills
with rolling water's entry shine
in pools of wet longing.
But he is lost.

Dark aspirations.
There are other contexts
with birth to breathe.
The water hymen is broken.
It tolls in a different tale.

Lost in waves of slow extinction,
shaped by the agony of old mothers,
Old man cares not for the gloom
that fills his periphery,
that points to the shore.

He walks not in today's peace,
nor beneath a wicker basket sun,
rolling across feathery fields,
hen-shaped and slowly dying away
before eyes can say goodbye.

It is Mother of pearl morning,
– beneath the inside of a turtle shell,
smelling of wet decay and salt –
He mounts the sea with pain,
a serpent grinds sand and wet weed,
stray birds shrieks in unison.

Day after driven day
Old man wrings the futile fire
lost middle men may scorn
in collect calls with consideration.

Midnight moon passes,
perpetuated by the ticking
of an old retreating heart.

All is contained in this manmade morning
where he stands by the window,
trading nebulous night for bright grief.

Teased by dark end's tell tale perusal
he falls windward into wet grass calling.
The viridian is a dark horse.

The bellowing roar of water watched
breaks in a distant seaweed summer.
Vacant shells and dead fish discarded.

Never before did a promise of continuance
roll morning into steeples and more cider,
with only a seahorse to plead with.

Old man lost in views:
There never was anything else.
He is close to you going.
It is winter.





14

There is no hidden agenda
Old man can count on,
no cheerful day, tap dancing
to fireflies and girls
on their way to the meat market.
Streets of silver
beg him to see the fracture.

Bones that melted for Paganini
reinvents the way he falls,
a soft surrender flowing
beneath cold sun humming.
He carries tall trees with him
and the dying of winds
that rest in the grass.

Pale bones and summers
where once wooden flutes echoed
out of groins in silent laughter
talk to a descending sea.

Fierce is the fire that feeds
on false sainthood and salt,
on naked arms in cloth.
Watermills move with gullibility
to stiff collars at high noon.

Sureties are pale words on waves
rolling wet sand to a dry shore.
A cat's smile may fold in silence
under dark water dreams.

Wild to the obnoxious bone
he tells his tale to the crowd
with no hope of a here after the bell,
with nothing more so ungraspable.

Stretched, corrupted and lost
in the brevity of human commotion
he ploughs the earth in his own fashion
grieving for the end of days to name.

Going down with thunder,
leaving the fat fabric of clouds
in a thick wake of yesterday,
– there is much umbra –
he separates daybreak from wild water.

He will not die in dread of fear,
nor tolerate the coming of mean storms.
All is salt, vinegar and fried fish in tears,
all is shape, longing and seaweed.




15

The old sorcerer
summons birds at dawn,
bedpans roll in the palm
of his other hand.
He wants more luminous rain,
more potent grass.

The second death came that dawn,
gulls and crows called into the light
just before rain and wind
left night to prowl elsewhere.

Early birches, charged and soaked
by the edge of more rain,
told a different story,
unfurling green flags in a distant war
where mongrels and squatters fight.

Distant bankers are squeezed
far into a burning dessert
where parched scorpion lips
bleed beneath a harsh crescent.

Migratory whispers
around lakes, in trees and high above,
herald thunder with beady eyes.

The shaman's shoes has gone
with the brooding light.
The passing of dreams
rolls over wet grass.

There is a no more in all
wonderfully cloaked
can pack into embraced.







16

"I am the first soil,
the breeding ground
of all conscious effort
tolling in open windows."

Wine flows red on walls
and sirens interfere
with dead streets walking;
thugs feast on low visibility.

Money makes bombs
that burn children.
Fingers that itch with power
run like fire through the hair.

Captured giants roll down scorched hills,
break into villages with no cheers.
Old man dreams of a world of free banking
where there is no need for fat children.

Free fall teenage suicide,
daredevils that old scribes forgot
while copying the myths,
fall into a booming darkness
rising over Gilgamesh mountain.

A river of tears
runs through that valley
where cedar and cannabis
once spiced the air,
where the olive was a deity
long before the flood.

A poor shepherd boy strapped
belted death to his day.
His much loved goat turned missile
for the sake of a different tale
where Ur no longer echoes.

Shamash! Ki! Inanna!
Sumerian ghosts
still sing in shadows
where villages bleed today,
all in an old man's sleep.




Poetry by Bob
Read 585 times
Written on 2015-12-14 at 20:31

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one trick pony The PoetBay support member heart!
i cannot overstate how much i enjoy this. reading it in one piece does make a difference.

at some point, around section 4, i began to let go, stopped trying to find a plot, or make sense of it, i just read it, and let the words come as they will. the musicality is flawless, there is not a missed beat throughout. by the tenth stanza i was hearing your voice, a voice, reading it, it is hypnotic; and, i play the guitar, and i was finding the key to accompany the music, and i was part of it, making music with you.

honestly, i found this mesmerizing. at first, the somewhat political nature of it was foremost. that dropped away. what i am feeling now is far warmer. or chillier, for it seems to be a coastal poem, rich with the sea, and a cold sea at that. ultimately, i think it is a poem of nature, of nature as we think of it, the sea, the coast, all life as we know it, but mostly it is the reality of an old man, living and looking back and, in some way, putting it all together, not trying to make sense of it, but giving the whole of it, impressions and conclusions, yet without judgment. what is, is. there is a sense of summation—a lifetime's accumulation of wisdom, and not only wisdom, but experience and everything that includes, from bewilderment to astonishment, to sage-ness, and all the thoughts that come with looking back.

there was one line that made me smile, i won't say which one, but it did, and it made a difference.

the musicality is so strong that i wish it were recorded so i could play along with it. i heard it as one would hear a chant, though, not like a mantra, for it is a story, and not as a drone, for it is musical.

my thoughts are getting muddled as i try to express myself here. i want to somehow put music to it, not a melody, absolutely not, but to find the keys that go with the moods, to find a mode that works, to have the keys and modes flow back and forth and into one other. i can hear it, and if i can hear it, i can play it.

i'm really excited about this, i think you can tell. if not, i am. thank you for posting it, and for the comments along the way. the images are endlessly intriguing and compelling, and the music, i can't say enough about it. i can imagine a friend reading aloud as i play. but, ultimately, it is the words, your words, that are the music and the images, and they are good words.

give my regards to the old man. i feel like i know him. i actually don't want to stop writing, i'm jazzed. but it's late, 3:30, i was outside watching the last of the geminids, then came in for tea, and read the poem. life is good.
2015-12-15