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Stephen Pickering

Category: My Poetry

  • The Proposal

    Can I hold your hand in Spring?
    It would be a most beautiful thing.
    I can take you ’round Haskel’s for lunch
    On Saturday so we don’t have to rush

    If its dry I’ll hold your clutch.
    Otherwise you’ll beat me to the punch.
    I love living in your bowl,
    And do you know on Saturday they offer free rolls!

    Gratis, no kidding,
    But before winter you must bring them some knitting
    Do it up in style
    So they can be proud and look at us smile.

    I’ll be your bookkeeper too.
    God knows you’ve earned your due.
    I’ll wish you all the best
    When the pumpkin headed monsters put you to the test.

    Awake in my dream
    Oh, it’s a marvelous thing
    To think you’ll be my wife
    And pour my coffee the rest of my life.

    You are all pumpkiny when you blush
    It’s a smile I’ve seen for miles when I’m free.
    I wish you would hold me up in your tree
    Feathered and silent, tasted of your touch.

    You are Grandma’s dream
    Coming alive at the seam.
    A wish maker’s dance
    Held still by a trance.

    You are diamonds and hides
    The King maker’s bride.
    Can we saddle up and ride
    Until we reach the other side?

    I’ll take you in hand
    And be ball rich grand.
    Let’s stake us out some land
    Just to show Daddy that we can.

    We’ll build rich farms
    That grow honeysuckle charms
    And dream of monkeys and apes
    Who eat our wine maker’s grapes.

    They sing winter songs.
    We work hard all week long.
    They lay in the carafe,
    Soaking in their warm bath.

    Shower me with hope.
    I know you think I’m poor.
    Poor with words and can’t cope.
    So if it doesn’t work we’ll open a store!

    At Christmas I’ll cut you a ham.
    We’ll stream icicles across his limb.
    We’ll build forests for sleep
    And burly ranches for our lazy sheep.

    I’m a sheep rancher’s wife.
    A coat maker’s bride.
    God, it’s good to be alive
    With only you by my side.

    Honey, can you slide the ruler of life?
    Can you be quiet for a while.
    I want to sit and gaze at the beef
    And dream of what its like to be a tree.

    I want to take the chariot for a spin
    And this time not for pretend.
    I want to ride rope and spring
    Like on a grasshopper’s dream.

    I like grinding it out for while.
    It doesn’t all have to be trophy’s and style.
    We can be lazy for a day,
    Or run outside and play.

    The frisbee catcher has a dog
    The Honeybee keeper acts like a stupid, wet frog.
    A kiss from you will make him smile,
    But don’t be gone for a while.

    Let’s sing and watch the Sun.
    After all, it’s how we begun.
    We’ll like dancing in the trees
    And after its over back down to the sea.

    A clown maker’s wife.
    A bee boppers life.
    Oh, what marvelous pets we’ll be
    Sold in a store, unlocked from our cage, for free.

  • A Poem: “Where the Ring Comes Together”

    Mountain goats are often seen at the top of Ha...
    Image via Wikipedia

    I miss driving up that street
    The last in the land
    With winds singing up Harney Peak.
    A blue diamond cross
    And a sailor’s sunburnt hand
    Are all that’s left
    Spreading across the dry land.

    The night is thirsty for the juice
    Of speech.
    Woodmills chill the cherry bark;
    The pond of the mind has drained dry,
    And all night long little crackleberry roosters
    Pray their way into the candles of the sky.
    It’s blue. But what isn’t?
    The candle burns the cathedral
    Headed skulls through the mud, and what’s left of a town
    Run by the rocky mountain weeds
    Covering their faces at dawn.
    (Oh teacher! Teacher! You taught me, but now its no fun!)

    Who knew. Who knew? “Zu” knew. That’s who!
    That’s it, we are climbing into the big Benz nude, only moonlight for a guide.
    But what, pray you, have we got to hide?
    Shills whispering sermons up ribbon covered hills?
    For that we’ll take a dollar and climb it ourself.
    Too bad for the Presidents. They didn’t see us live.
    But we could have seeded candy for them,
    And the green in our forest and the maple of our blanched cheeks
    Could have penetrated their fossil tongues.

    On climber! You’re goodwill has been left out to rot.
    Better to make it before sun down when the heap in you
    Gripes out you’re lost.
    Come home closer, or better yet, stand still, and forget everything,
    Except lusting the inside of this rock,
    Has been wrong.

    They will claim me back from the marble hill
    For referring back to the never ending stream,
    The one that runs uphill; to whispers that have no lips
    Hunting inside the heart’s canyon’s rim.
    Off with their heads! I’ll say it again, and I’ll say it last:
    Supper grows growling like a hood wrinkled owl
    From the depths of the mind.
    Of-quoted sister ant curls her arms around the wind.
    It’s cold up here.
    We’ve been freezing for years.
    But is that the past or the future?
    Past present, past future
    Pass me the presents!
    Still we’ll go down quietly back to our dove like
    Whipper-will past. Let’s hope for a time at least (present, future?)
    The further in the vein we scamper,
    We’ll be able to hold her still.

    Still I’m confused. Who knew a climber could get so hungry?
    Especially when the higher he gets the lower he feeds.

    The bathing quilt whom the Sun with his rays impregnated,
    Her sons said to the spider woman,
    “The lover of a lifetime.”

    And then she held the roots still,
    Until they became wicked and flew over mountains
    Through the balance of the circle from which they came.

    ©2009 Stephen Pickering
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  • A New Poem: “Street Car, Sweet Heart, Sweat Hard”

    I love your Spanish talk.
    The soft ground around you
    Hovers as you walk.
    Chinese flowers grow out of me
    like dreams lifted under a bed
    of yellow Lantana and grapewood rosevine.
    Midnight and a sleep walking Sun
    dip its claws into the milky Moon.

    She blows a serenade and makes a note in her diary: March 14th;
    Or was it the other day when we played through the woods in the synagogue’s court?
    I kept my diary clear
    with liquor? hidden there.

    All those cars have resisted, and those children inside us have died,
    but the moist oil still grasps at the roots of the darkened cells.
    (It’s old, and the unmarried couple inside still snuggle closely to the foot of her screaming limb.)

    Once a bold, minted Moon?struck the head like a bell and turned us red,
    And the merry men of the next town whistled “Dixie” all the way down
    to the smoothed River’s bed.

    A maestro, that dark little secret, always dancing and standing still.
    (She, seh, was the dear. May we call you dear? Take our collective blue beard hand.)

    Governor rubs the chocolate chip lips of white faces that read: “never washed hair.”
    Steers calling sisters for dates and the narrow alley was our field with its
    one chilling little blade.

    All the sorcerers were baked
    Inside a street lit with humiliating desire.
    That moment never turned or backed up when the future,
    blinded, uncaring, unknowingly,
    decided to run us over.

    Someday they will tell me she still lives there,
    every soaked board still crying, trying to pull out the rusty nails
    of the last conversation made,
    and yet, still, even with all the talk,
    That she is never at home.

  • A New Poem: Sonnet #2 “Sunfather”

    Sunfather

    Red Wave Petunias shower over clay,
    All things can open up and show their light.
    A life becomes transparent in warm May.
    Transparent to transcendence born from night.

    Their eyes the leaves foam into greening smiles
    to Father Sun and Mother Sea of dream.
    They feel the music, sibling Wind breathes miles
    through body, bread and crown beneath the stream.

    It is the night of meeting ringing gold
    that dance and sing in drippings of the womb.
    A rushing waterfall that drapes us cold.
    Our salmon hearts dive in the unseen room.

    We sprang out from the sea by silent sounds,
    And fire ringed God’s swung open spirits’ clouds.

    © 2007/2009 Stephen Pickering

    (there still will be a bunch of iteration to do on this one. I finished it, not hurriedly, but in one sitting because of the importance of composition.)

  • Sonnet #1

    "Untitled" by Ruza Bagaric
    "Untitled" by Ruza Bagaric

    (*I figured if Shakespeare can write a hundred than I can too.)

    Sonnet #1

    I loved the girl who lived next door to me.
    Her eyes were blue and clear and sang with joy.
    She was the sun, the grass, the trees, and stream.
    Her hair was blond and bobbed just like a boy.
    Then something happened or was it just fate?
    The summer ended and the snow began to fall.
    The Garden froze and ice locked up her gate.
    Kid’s icy jeers piled up the labyrinth’s wall.
    The schools and churches crammed our time of play.
    We boys formed clubs; girls spoke in secret codes.
    The flowers froze; exuberant dancing went away,
    And natural feelings morphed to vaudeville shows.

    The dragon stole the treasures of our life.
    Until you lift her veil, her love will die.

    © 2008 Stephen Pickering

  • A New Poem: The Cross

    The river flows uphill.
    It isn’t magic.
    Magic is when it flows downhill.

    The arrow of time is pierced
    by eternity

    The man hanging is
    the soul
    awakened.

    The milk girl is dancing
    The “Cotten-Eyed Joe”
    on the gym floor of the mind
    underneath which the oceans of the Cosmos
    Splash applause and awake our Suns.
    On the head of a pin, spinning,
    she offers distance
    heaven’s wooden bowl.

    Living is easy.

    And the Lady of our feet
    washes the expression
    of how things shalt be
    from the Skull’s dead head
    with the Water of Life.

    Below the willowed valley’s flowery eyes
    see without looking
    reach without moving
    teach without speaking,
    and love without thinking.

    Every time one of its olive branches whispers
    the secret of secrets into the Mediterranean breeze,
    a new life is born of virgin birth,
    transcendently, through the middle of the true cross,
    the heart.

    ©2009 Stephen Pickering