Slush Pile Rejects @slush-pile-rejects - Tumblr Blog

kitchen

There's a scent of nuts, and of char, and of honey, though the flame's not in sight from the fuss of the day to the solace of the evening, but it glows in the night.

#poetry #poem #sestet #valentine's day #constancy

no bridge

The night is warm and cloudless, and the stars are out in force: a smattering of gems spread out across the sandy shoals and bars our galaxy accounts—the heaven's Thames lazily winding past my perch. And not a bridge among them. Not one thread of silk, nor kids to wave at from this stolid plot— nought but a saucerful of our spilt milk. We are not fate or fortune's purview, we have not that claim. Whatever plans the skies have woven in their warp and weft must be the destiny of legends, wondrous wise, while we are stepchildren, whom none will bless. Still yearly, we return here, nonetheless.

#poetry #poem #sonnet #qixi #fate #no fate

in the middle

For you, I have defeated terrors that pursued me for their pleasure, over hills and under seas, the blue nights where the wills of men are smothered, only to be spat out on some stony beach. Now I combat a few short homeward travels, and what ills are those against the blade of fate that kills four men in five? Nothing to shiver at! But as each day in drifting ends, as I regard each new, luxuriant bed, as each town bids its interchangeable goodbye— to but observe this custom in the breach! Perhaps, this will be spoken of, some day, but from this day, I cannot see the way.

#poetry #poem #sonnet #bloomsday #wandering

five parts

Our world is in the stars. What do they see in us? The uncompleted business of gravity, of physics? What redress should we poor mortals offer that could free them from their cosmic burden, a degree of respite from the truth they tell, unless we are for them but trials to prepossess? We are for them to blemish or to bless. So let them spin and travel in their round, and bid them come and go; and give them leave to push us to and fro. 'Twould be unsound for us to toil and trouble not to cleave to hope. Do not despair: for though we gaze, and long, we know the secret of our days.

I just now noticed I messed up the rhyme scheme in line eight

I'm sure the abstract concept of sonnets is up in arms

#poetry #poem #sonnetesque #fate #astronomy as metaphor

trivial

It was a Sunday when we met, that I remember. Says it all, I think—I'd put down any bet it was a Sunday. When we met, I told myself I wouldn't get too into you—I wouldn't fall. It was a Sunday when we met. That I remember says it all.

#poetry #poem #triolet #memory #love

cold and clear

The moon casts grey and black across the land, or our land, I should say; the land we cannot see by day for all the colored glare and gloss, that throw our senses for a loss. We watch the sun unsurely sway and slowly count the hours away till nighttime comes at last to toss aside irrelevance. What's left is truth: the warmth of hands in gloves, the constancy of stars bereft of crosses, or the turtle doves that someone here has sent, or might, on this or any second night.

#poetry #poem #sonnet #iambic tetrameter #dreamtime #star-crossed lovers

the day

I am your dawn, you are my setting sun— on this day. Every day is not this day; now nightingales may hear what roosters say, betraying what the quitting night has done. The moon may shy, the stars may have their run, who knows what souls have crossed the Milky Way. There are no dreams, no whispers left to pray, no echoes in the quaking rushes, none! The silver shadow holds us in our thrall, our magic wish's habitat. Bold blue, like ice, spreads forth its clear cold cloak and call, with space and time beneath its arching hue. You are my setting sun—I am your dawn, and now the night, the quitting night, has gone.

#poetry #poem #sonnet #clarity #the muse

crease

My heart is creased for you—although it's been an age, it still recalls your curves and currents, to and fro. My heart is creased for you, although it beats unevenly, and no, it does not miss your gilded walls. My heart is creased for you; although it's been an age, it still recalls.

#poetry #poem #triolet #bloomsday #joyce #exile

on a road we imagined in Scotland

but a heart stops, suddenly fifty years of living must be compressed into a matter of seconds Memories stamped into a flurry of desperate activity flood us, drown us, clamor for our attention Mere muscles and functions, aspects, processes— these are discarded for the final act of dissolution so all our time remaining can be spent in rapturous affection The miser that saved his love from or for death runs aground, and leaks—

traipsing through the undergrowth, we are filled and overflow with deafening childhood song, as unbreathing blood files by as groaning blood files by

j.s. I still remember you

#poetry #poem #free verse #mortality #death #remembrance #really old stuff

agreement

How can we two be anything but two? No more than left can be another right, no more than day can last the coming night— no, lest they set the universe askew.

And yet who else can see myself, but you? As one hand claps the other in delight, as dusk's green bridge transports the sun in flight— meanwhile the old moon's arms embrace the new.

#poetry #poem #octave #qixi #duality #unity

pretty near

There's a model (or there used to be) in the store window on a street near the house where I used to live. Perhaps it's still there, or perhaps, it's been knocked down for parking. Anyway, the model wore whatever dress was in fashion in that month or season, although maybe it was dowdier at the end. But it was her neck, white and headless, arcing forward into nothingness, that stays with me. She was sad (or is), I sometimes think, or maybe other times, I think she was peering into the universe like an impudent waterfall or gargoyle. I would recognize her in another store, you know, because of that neck, unfinished and full of possibilities. I could write anything about her, and we would all remember her, this way, the way I saw her when I was younger. Maybe we would not gather every year, making pilgrimages and tours of her curves, but I think we are not less intimate even so.

#poetry #poem #free verse #bloomsday #memory

cycle

You have been here before—a short refrain, a half-remembered song—but not like this. This time, there is a fall of water, plain and cool, a whispering you cannot miss. It stops you, even as you recognize its sign: a thing you are, much more than what you see or feel. Nothing that holds or ties you to your kindness or contrition, but—!

As you step forward, coolly in the sand, you are still sure you will not fall, no more than when you were a child, when mothers and their purses were a mystery they would pour out like a fountain, spectacles of springs and pocket clasps that shamed the wealth of kings.

#poetry #poem #sonnet #youth #timelessness #the muse

you are

You are a muse afire: You cannot say a word but cry it out; you cannot strike a pose but stomp it. Every moment, like a fool, I think I've learned my careful way around your waters, then's a playful spray (or what's the same, a caustic one) to spike me in my brazen face. That's but one strike of three, suspended over me all day. And while I'm stewing in my righteous wrath, I'll tell the manner that you've spent our love— yes, led it down this godforsaken path. —And then I glance at something odd above. You don't bring out the best from me, it's true, but what brings out the true from me is you.

#poetry #poem #sonnet #truth #the muse #shakespeare

preamble

I do not think there's anything as pretty as a star— as cold and bright as snow and ice, or searchlights from afar.

And if I wished upon a star as everyone has done, I'd like to walk amongst them all, and hold them, every one.

r.i.p. terence dickinson

#poetry #poem #rhymed verse #astronomy #mortality #rip terence dickinson

quiet, quiet now

There's a moon in my mouth, and because star's in the back I'm going to let it snow, softly, so softly now I can't hear. Maybe it didn't hit the tree.

Fully bright in the night, making angels in my fingers, imagining what sweet could stick in the crevices between, and I'll bet we will, too.

#poetry #poem #free verse #christmas #the muse #the future

in a telescope

In my telescope, a time machine, objects in the field of view are wrapped up in dew, backlit by the setting sun (or what else may shine). Angels on the sidewalk enclosing everyday souls.

I walked on a field of grass and people, one artificial by design and the other by inattention. It might all have been a show, tempting me to no avail, before her, a shiver of brown. I think it may have been the twenty-second, of August, or thereabouts (but to be honest, none of those dates are lyrical).

We cast our futures via that doorway, a chain link fence to a brief song and dance, one I learned only recently that everyone heard and knew. I don't think I did, but I remember spinning, or relatively, the world did, pulling me outward with it with centrifugal force the way my son did once.

I came in with that world, and I'll take it with me, even if it still whirrs, like a watch in the grave. Might as well not even run. We are connected by the finest thread of silk, and when the day arrives and the dream breaks, who ends whom, not even the crow knows, not even the crow.

#poetry #poem #free verse #old love #mortality #me being dark woowoo #at least a little grey

that moment, deconstructed

I didn't know, you think. The way I turned around, as though to catch a secret sign you might have dropped—I couldn't have. I learned my weakness scar, my sheltered crease was mine to look at, if alone, or in a crowd, concealed in plain sight as it were. That fall you might have been another girl, allowed to pass in blue and gold—to pass at all, quite possibly. We've run that moment back to front and outside in, no closer to an answer—which we might reject, for lack of an alternative. What can we do, I ask, before your memories disappear: your eyes are blurry, now that you are near.

#poetry #poem #sonnet #new love #the sorites paradox

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