4 New Iambic Poems

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Stephen Pickering

Iambic Dimeter:

“I Know the Lake”

I know the lake.
There’s nothing more.
What is at stake
Is behind the door.

Up in the sky
Your hair flew wild.
Your sunglassed eyes
They hid the child.

I thought you said
To meet down there.
We’d find the bed
Without a care.

It’s over now.
It died somehow.

Iambic Trimeter:

“The Girls of Boston’s Bay”

The girls of Boston’s Bay
With circled stars for crowns,
They have some tea to save
Before a nation drowns.

They chew on Franklin’s ear:
French whores, they’ll have to cease.
Theses secrets Paul must steer
With snakes’ coiled fangs to sea.

The peoples’ fists clenched
Poetic visions choke.
Only shelters smell the stench
As purple mountains’ glow.

They pull the dream to shore
Jerusalem had bore.

Iambic Tetrameter:

“Comets”

It’s interesting to say the least
To sit here now among the stars
Above the desert’s slouching beast
Watching warriors collide on Mars.

It be temper and it be stew
The magic bogeymen were brought.
They drank from stones the witches brew
And guarded temples where Zen was taught.

The egg that cracked the Russian woods
Blasted our chimps through Sputnicks cage.
Forever laying where they stood
Each past dropped in a falling stage.

If we sit back enough and stare,
Our dogs we launched be finally there.

Iambic Pentameter:

Sonnet #6

I smell the burnt red color of the fall.
Back from the hunt curled up in evening sleep.
The girls have climbed the mountain spirit’s wall.
The fireplace burns a pathway to our dreams.

A Norwegian pine absorbs the grieving day.
The children leave their Latin books alone
With the decisions Caesar has to make,
And cherubim who speak in tongues through stone.

Through Italy the German troops will drive.
We pass the ball hoping for winning years.
They pass the scotch just hoping to survive.
If either drops, the Tiber drowns in tears.

The ‘Mercan girl was born in a French Bar.
But leaves this world through a bent steel guitar.

A New Original Poem: “There’s something dark…”

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Stephen Pickering

[audio:http://www.stephenpickering.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Theres-Something-Dark.mp3]

There’s something dark about this town.
It’s made my heart all broken sore.
The stars upstairs they hear a sound.
The dark hair girl she’s at the door.
I want to go somewhere and weep.
She hurts me with her darkest stares.
Through her I walk the lonely street
Of silent dreams and cold nightmares.
The scars of vice in Central Park
Arrest the man the news had lost.
He waltzes girls back to the dark
Who think of nothing nor what it costs.
These folks who tell their dreams goodbye,
Build towers up to cut the sky.

These flowers bloom and the night goes on
The T.V. tells us what’s right from wrong.

_____________________________________________________________

*Notes: I’ve been experimenting with different sized ‘feet’ than pentameter. So, the above poem is just like a sonnet in its structure, except its in iambic ‘quadrameter’ or four iambic feet. I don’t know why. Just to try something different. I did another in iambic tetrameter. Oh actually I posted that a few days ago, I think. Oh yes, in this lot of three poems, it’s the first: http://www.stephenpickering.com/2010/08/28/saturday-reading-three-new-poems/

I’ve also been working with some that have varying lengths. I think the best bet in the long run for me, is to let the line speak for itself, in the sense that, however it hits me, whatever length that is, just go with that. And then I think you get to a point where you don’t really need to fit the line into a structure if it doesn’t come to you that way, which naturally is free verse.

So I guess, one of the points of writing within structure, is almost like exercise. You do that (or this) for a while, then your brain feels strong enough, confident enough, if you will, to walk out on the “limbs” alone.

A Poem | Scarlet Fever

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Stephen Pickering

I want to become the flower
Drinking a hawthorn berry shower.
I feel that the painting is alive
That I could jump inside
and live a life.

The love you want resides inside a flame
Burning Jerusalem to the coast of Spain.
From the secret Indian province
to the street children’s colorful ribbon dance.
A carousel song.
They want to belong.
Children of the Sun
in the land before time begun.

We are the whispering ones,
following the trail of crumbs,
grasping for song,
hoping the the poem will come along.
“Run along, run along, my dears
before those little eyes fill with tears.
They are the dew, you know,
Freshly made from the melting snow.
The only God is in your head,
but he’s real and he’s meant what he’s said.”

We’re so tired. We need some sleep.
It’s so important that we dream.
It becomes the patterned sleeve,
The path by which we leave.
Tomorrow’s sounding more like a bell
On which the doves of heaven sing
To the serpents of hell.
Will we wait here all morning in the rain
For the climbing of that midnight train?

It’s made of blue smoke and jazz,
and all the things that we didn’t have.
Halve a peach with me.
Sit down and eat.
When you were a baby covered in red
Did you know the song would awaken the souls
and bring back the dead?

Don’t forget the poem,
or Lucy living under Lake Victoria’s soil.
Blood made of Sun.
Run, rabbit, run.
London is here,
but her price is too dear.

I’m not sure what would make us happy tonight.
A glass of mediteranean wine?
Distilled from the soapy sea
Of flavored memory?

What should we worry about,
cry for and shout?
We may go to sleep,
Lie about and dream,
or maybe there’s something on T.V.,
then walk quietly the evening streets.

The poem at the end of the mind
peeks its eyes up through the morning’s rhyme,
effortlessly following the golden thread of desire,
moving by magic carpet and doesn’t tire.
It winds up a European cobblestone street
looking for a safe place to curl up and grieve.
It is the red, Irish beauty among the leaves
and the flight to the maiden czar across the eternal sea.
She who holds court
at the end of the World.

At the bottom of that eternal, endless sea
The golden bird, golden horse, the princess
We want to return and long to be.

Poem | “Thunder Painting”

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Stephen Pickering

Don’t be desireous under White Mountain.
The river’s tall feathered tail
Will blast you into the crag’s milky fountain.
Will whisk you away
To a faraway place
In the steam boat’s desert Sun,
Buried beneath a 17th century ruin.
You won’t get to stay up and play.
Each door will turn you away.
You won’t burn your fires at midnight
Or dream of the horse haired magic of twilight.
The cattle callers will stake their claim
Down your captured, straining, mustang mane.
Only for the bewildered and assertive has time begun.
So now you are forever on the run
From the father with a shot gun,
From the book that’s never done.
A story of a man who climbed a cloud
Getting passed the Giant by not making a sound.
But the danger is he may sleep on the stove or be a meal.
When there’s a castle on your head
That’s part of the deal.
If you find your way down
You’ll be the talk of the town.
Covered in Goose down
Eveywhere you go golden eggs roll around.
Rescue Mother from the debt.
Take Newton’s weight off your head.
Lift the Goddess of Sais’ silken veil.
And for the New World set sail.
Buy your Indian master whose been two places at once
Before he sells Manhattan for a buck.
Inside his pipe is a 10,000 year old pine,
Japanese Geisha girls and black Saki wine.

It don’t take science to tell us it will never die.
It’s one hundred deer skin catamarans
Sailing Chinese warriors to settle Peruvian lands.
They’ll block your walls and tear down your office
If all you can think of
Is sex with the White Buffalo Goddess.
So when you approach her, lay down your mask.
Let the blue Moon dance on the snowy fields and pass.
Let the deer’s eyes see through the men with guns
To the glistening forest and endless mountains beyond.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from stephenpickering’s posterous

Poem | “9 Miracles”

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Stephen Pickering

We can all be good.
The rough beast crawling towards Bethlehem
says, “You should.”
But we can let it go,
face in the wind, rain, and snow,
as the falcon of our soul soars off Kilimanjaro.
The distant bells
are Black Sea shells,
and her lips sail closer
as we fall deeper
into a dreamless sleep, dryer than the Sahara,
only broken up by the sparkle of the Sun lasered sand
that the beast remembers as a once fruitful land.
At once we transcend Pharoah’s gold
and the story of Yusef that’s been told
of falling in a well and into Egypt being sold.
It doesn’t hold as much for us anymore now that the fire
has colored the mountain and drinken from the well
of thirsty distraction that’s blinded to the veil
covering the passage to the Promiseland.

We hold true to these words,
heart given to each other,
and our congregation formed like a ring of birds.

One for the Trinity two for the show
three to take the chances so that all can know.

Isis can hold us up even as she nurses the productions of time
in search of her husband the divine.

We sit on the throne, a Supernova
that produced all this gold,
as the serpent slithers towards Rome.
Ptolemy falls from the Alexandrian stacks
carrying the Moon and stars on his back.
Someone such should know
that the Caliphs have buried his secret scroll.
The priests drown the halls in chants
as the prince discovers the burning bed.
Each Irish maidens’ beauty more spectacular than the next
as Olympus opens each door to the morning breath,
and Demeter sprints to Avalon
with the message of Aquinas’ last glance.

A New Poem | “Octavia Blue”

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Stephen Pickering

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.