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Stephen Pickering

Tag: Poem

  • A New Poem | “Octavia Blue”

    Let’s relax for a moment.
    A raison d’être will be our token.
    The city is broken.
    The few who’ve moved here haven’t spoken.

    The fugue in Boston will have it lit for March,
    Springing a dolphin jump over Constantine’s Arch.
    But they can’t make their decisions in any sort of style.
    It means we’ll be waiting in this district of oranges for a while.

    The valley of the beast
    Needs a decent release.
    It’s good the smoke’s stopped here
    Before killing all the Hudson’s flock of deer.

    I’ve looked at you for a moment.
    Wow, I didn’t die or become frozen!
    I’ve taken the Chinese coast by storm
    Soon my personality there will be all the norm.

    They will be drinking my blood in Calcutta,
    Drunks scrapping the Ganges for God, or the son of.
    Yesuf they call him? He came here a few years?
    Yes, here he learned the tricks to tear the Devil to tears.

    By what caravan did he arrive jaded in gems?
    Oh alone, discreet, no one can even swear it was him.
    You don’t understand these new age Gods:
    Not flashy, they’re more subtle with their charms.

    Did he visit the Buddha’s holy tree?
    Yes, there he envisioned how his would turn out to be.
    Did he think the Empire would have come this far?
    Yeah, but he never dreamed things would get so dark.

    Shall we return to the tavern for one more drink?
    Yes, by Jove, it’s the only thing that let’s us think!
    One more question is nagging me: what about the girl?
    Oh, he thought ’bout it a while, but then figured he’d save her
    For the next World.

    Sent from my iPhone

    Posted via email from stephenpickering’s posterous

  • Ocean City (A Poem)

    There are stars inside my blood
    And my blood’s inside a star.
    We’ve rolled the comet oceans, survived the flood,
    And harmonized infinite worlds inside a beating pulsar.I saw silver tonight and one red flame.
    My sky was below me and my sea above.
    Though we knew the answer, we couldn’t say the name.
    We became pure feeling, but it wasn’t hate or love.

    The true victory lies inside the undefined.
    True love was two minutes before you were not mine.
    When the ship returns with his golden flock,
    Greece will be restored, and Hermes never stopped.

    The old German man looks down from the Bavarian Alps,
    Watching the Ionian fishermen scratching their scalps.
    The Fisher King returns damaged goods
    To his drawbridge castle hidden in the English woods.

    The maiden escaping the God turns into a doe.
    Pluto knowing both, hesitates, and turns white as snow.
    All the kids take photos of St. Petersburg’s colorful dancers
    While an iceburg dead eyes the city, demanding answers.

    Finally the two of us feel good as rain.
    Two more days and we’ll bake these alleyways again.
    The twelve headed monster respects no sleep.
    But he didn’t know what slayed him was us waking while we dreamed.

    Sent from my iPhone

    Posted via email from stephenpickering’s posterous

  • Where’s the King?

    Where’s the King,
    The radiant crown?
    All winter long he’s been down,
    Down to the ground,
    Driven by a stake.
    Oh, how he pays for the glowing mistake.
    But I’ll take you in my arms at night.
    Alice will soon find the cat,
    And everything will be alright.
    The lake will glitter with moonlight
    With the boxers exuberant by the pool
    Not understanding where he’s at.

    Will we go to school
    Or hooky down by the river
    Protected by the Cottonwoods and the cool
    Shoals that makes our souls shiver?

    An ant awaits us to give up our thoughts,
    To set our books down by the stream.
    He digs his hole in search of the literary dream,
    the fairy tale, the only thing
    that can truly be lived out in Spring.

    He’ll say I loved your wonderful musings
    But the sentence you wrote on Romeo’s confusing.
    Shouldn’t you kiss or at least hold her hand?
    And let go of the reins like a romantic man?

    The Russians are under ground, you know,
    Dating bronze, silver, and golden girls
    Who’ve built castles under the snow.
    Each night I speak to them
    To see how their adventure’s turned.
    Pa Ruuski is not the language we speak
    It’s one you never heard

    Jesus’ triangle sweeps the West.
    Buddha’s the East.
    They say the great mountain fills the South
    With eternal life for he who sucks from it’s rivers mouth.

    But you should take your girl now
    And go back to school;
    Back to the chambers of the golden rule.
    There will be other times
    To play and frolic and rhyme.
    Come back tomorrow and you’ll lose your sorrow.
    Come back next week,
    I’ll bring you the dream you seek.

    Catfish at night: the crickets delight.
    They belong in eternal June
    Hanging from the crescent Moon.
    Lay here for a moment, but then you must leave soon.
    Isn’t that what your mind says?
    But rejoice, for you may leave your Soul here,
    for all of eternity, to swoon.

    Sent from my iPhone

    Posted via email from stephenpickering’s posterous

  • An Original Poem | “Wall Paintings”
    These brick buildings, well they won't help us now. It's not what the soul wants. The soul wants to open up Coconut shells and rain from clouds and hang leafy shells on your ears as an engagement ring. The Hungarian tribes inside it are unfrozen by the wandering Danube. They are on their way to the black sea to wash their rusty hands clean Of the poison the stag men cursed them with For dripping the cave dark without homage. Their hands' ache is released by the goddess of the river Second cousin to Athena due to be married any day now To the sea's never ending unbounded completeness. The hand that skims the shoals learns Russian Under the water and can speak to the wood carp now As the whole caravan is guided eastward by the alps breath. Eli's sister is swept down the Blue Ridges to the village That she spent her childhood running from To spin cotton into gold. A thread long enough to stretch the Atlantic and be sold. She's happy to have work again but has reseigned herself Of ever marrying. The soul doesn't want these things. The hand only wants water And the nose only the red and orange leaves Floating on the God of the Appalachian's breath. But she will come back. If you pray enough they shall release her. We'll sit in coffee shops in Paris all night writing lines Hoping the girl shall find him and the string reach the Hungarians in time. What do the poet's strike out at when they sleep? Do they think when they dream Or only dream of sleeping with her When the journey has been made And the cave stags can rise up their sacred hole again Lighting the darkness in the world above?

  • 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.