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Stephen Pickering

Category: Poems

  • A New Sonnet in Iambic Tetrameter

    I’m here with you up in the Sun.
    We’ve come together, shadow soul.
    Today the mountain’s song’s begun.
    Those guarding clouds have let us go.

    We’re born from rays that blossom light,
    when he appeared and took her hand..
    The jewel of our mind shines bright.
    The space ahead is diamond land.

    Where once we walked the pollen path,
    we fly upon a golden horse.
    The only wisdom we had to ask
    was through her eyes the sacred course.

    A sacred marriage flamed down there.
    We found our father from her stare.

    ©2013 Stephen K. Pickering

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  • New Poem: A Natural

    “A Natural”

    I won’t say the things that I have to say,
    the feelings furrow all alone in the autumn mist,
    until you finally get up and walk away,
    and the chills that have eyes blow us their last, snowy, purpley kiss.

    I cascade over the heights of your frozen, mountaintop world.
    I skate upon your silky sweet, ice cream smile.
    Deep in the forest, they write, sleeps the world’s most beautiful girl.
    She awakens when you, inside yourself, find her missing child.

    This is the light where the world can’t come in.
    When we look into each other’s eyes what do we really see?
    Together, the holly from Gethsemene flows into the Jordan’s bend,
    feeding flowers opening brightly, resonating the mountain’s inner dream.

    I am the god of the sea,
    the fire in the rain spattering and splashing love.
    When I swim to the surface, you are released.
    When I dive to the bottom, you fly to heaven like a dove.

    We are caught between two worlds.
    I’ve seen your sails blow close to my shore.
    One here, the other holding my baby girl.
    Those eyes that shine, open at last, the secret, magical door.

    Something primordial says that “she is my wife.”
    But the harder I chase, the faster she runs away.
    We’re out here on the playing fields, the field of our life.
    And it’s only when I stop does she, a metaphor for something deeper, turn around and stay.

    When I  first saw her, it felt like I envisioned a ring
    that could bring back all of the things I’d ever loved.
    She’s the white buffalo maiden who sings atop Harney Peak,
    the princess in the snow marrying the sacred below with all that’s above.

    © 2013 Stephen Pickering
     

  • New American Poem: Stay Composed

    “Stay Composed”

    There’s something so deep in my heart
    in each cell of me,
    swimming along this river of the night so dark,
    speaking to another century.

    I am the hand that swims through your sea
    for some missing piece of gold.
    I am the rose that blooms from your seed
    In a deep, hidden story that’s never been told.

    The infant child was born
    I try to put these things together piece by piece
    across the sea, on the yonder shore
    but they already exist together here inside of me

    This bed, the planets that are in our head,
    the love that we saw with our eyes but never said,
    are all made from the same substance, transcendent of time or place,
    that is neither alive nor dead.

    I’m Mercury, and your Venus,
    and that’s so, hermetically speaking,
    nothing ever comes between us.

    And sometimes it feels like, when we’re quiet like this, quietly Dancing with the moon
    that anything that we wish for, deep in our hearts,
    will come true.

    What’s inside this fly, what makes it go
    Is more information, more mystery than the whole world
    understands or knows.

    I can’t give you what you desire,
    And I can’t give you what you need.
    But I can take you to that place that is even higher
    Where, for the first time, you will finally see.

  • New Poem: “Something Spins Around”

    Something spins around
    I still think the Genie must spin.
    What is happening now?
    Why are we in the shape we’re in?

    The Goat sucks at the root.
    I walk miles in the snow.
    There’s nothing we can do.
    I’m kept warm by your eyes glow.

    It’s not about me, nor not about me
    But until the connections made
    I’ll go on spinning endlessly
    And take each step day by day.

    I make it home escaping the bear;
    Limbs frozen heart strings ablaze;
    But I’m mauled by the nightgown you wear.
    High we dance holding the wire of our great escape.

    Sent from my iPhone

  • Today is Emily Dickinson’s Birthday. So, I Should Write a Poem

    Everything points your way;
    You can see the golden eye.
    What the Queen has bequeathed to stay
    home runs and apple pies loft back into your sky.

    Each ruinous nation
    rejects finally even the fallen tree;
    Above the skies stares salvation
    where still the angels sing.

    Where were you when she was born?
    You were a tree, a river, and finally a tear.
    Whose lips were those that were shorn?
    Shaven notes from the throat so none could hear.

    This dream awakes you, but you still sleep.
    Outside the cold wind sings her favorite winter song.
    One can feel something moving beneath the Solstice deep:
    Eyes that speak of staying and, yet, in their golden radiance, of moving on.

    ©2011 Stephen K. Pickering

    ____________

    “Her Face Was in a Bed of Hair”

    Her face was in a bed of hair,
    Like flowers in a plot-
    Her hand was whiter than the sperm
    That feeds the sacred light.
    Her tongue more tender than the tune
    That totters in the leaves_
    Who hears may be incredulous,
    Who witnesses, believes.

    ©1880 Emily Dickinson

    Emily Dickinson – Her True Self from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

  • Poem: “Out There”

    There’s something about standing here.
    Purple lake.
    You lake monsters curl
    around Nessie’s frame
    while locked inside
    twirls Nessie’s babe.
    The bark peeled away,
    the arrow fires straight through
    the cotton woods
    where the vision stood.
    One can hear the fields ticking,
    the silence purring
    Delta blues
    Bitches brew.
    The vision spirals inward
    to that place
    where nothing escapes.
    The gourd swallows the flame
    until we’re full, until we’re done
    until we’ve given up
    and then smiles it back to us again.

     

    © 2011 – Stephen K. Pickering