Anonymous Bosch(i)

[Boschi]

Nothing like a mojito to lubricate the muse... boy, that just sounds sick.

'Tanyrate, hope this tickles someone's fancy. Please keep it here folks.


Untitled

Dig down,
hands sunk deep, til it stays;
creased in smiles that flex
over knuckles, under nails.

Honesty.
Honestly;
I labor, lost to causes, free to bleed the
rich deep red of beets, risen from it's earth bound orb to arch
through luminous green.

Hold me up against the sun,
veins dark with ruby earth.

Feed the wanton leaves that furl then flare,
declaring summer's ease in verdant stretches,
in stained glass panes,
in cool alcoves.

For this I kneel on dirty knees,
give praise and don a soiled livery.


- Boschi

[Boschi]

Hmmm.... that felt good. Have another.


Nautilus

Plucked from a mediocre beach
this fragment, this worn bit of smoothed and traceless white
remembers.

Ten thousand years, ten thousand feet,
ascending,
bouyed by air exactly moved from one arched hall to the next.

Transfer
your breath, that moment before your lungs fill.
Echoing down the long curve of my chambers
until I sing
of depths and epochs buried now.

Your ear.
Hold me to your ear,
and listen at the hidden spaces long forgot.

- Boschi

(Please forgive any slight discrepancies with biologic or oceanic fact - call it metaphor, literary license, or inebriation, whatever works for you.)

[SJ]

Great poems,thanks for sharing.

[LesbianJedi87]

well i liked em! So write more!

[Belli Bear]

really.. really.. really.. good

i love what you write about, and.. wow.. such an interesting way of expressing it.. more now yes? pleease?


- Belli XxX

[Boschi]

On second thought, this one (Liege) kinda sucked. So SHAZAAM. Tis deleted.

[Renee85]

This new thread caught my eye and I just had to stop by to tell you that I love your writing. Continue please! And thanks for sharing.

[onyxsundrops]

Wow, great poems. Please continue to post if your muse allows you.

Yvonne

[SJ]

Interesting writing style,great poetry.

[Kieli]

Anyone who can incorporate Hieronymous Bosch into their username deserves a bit of my attention *chuckle* I like the Untitled one and Nautilus....Liege left be wondering a bit but that's just me. Normally I don't read poetry but yours grabbed my attention. Looking forward to reading your other works.

Cheers!
K.

[Boschi]

Doobie doobie feedback ...

SJ, LesbianJedi, Belli Bear, Renee85 - Thanks y'all. I really appreciate the fb.

onyxsundrops - thanks much. As for my muse, she's a bit irregular and entirely too fond of drink. Sheepish grin. Need to work on writing more regularly ... your poems were a pleasant reminder of that.

Kieli - Yeah, kinda wish I'd left Liege in the box, but see note above re: muse propensities. The whole trite angst thing tends to bubble up at times like those. Please excuse.
Would love to have more specific criticism if you have the time and inclination, but will also just happily accept your commentary as a sign that someone out there actually read and thought about what I wrote (which is kinda remarkable).
Praise tends to make me uncomfortable - I find criticism a more reliable indication of interest in/attention to what I say or write. So big thanks there.
And Hieronymus is in fact the Man...

And a random note to anyone out there who liked the first untitled poem:

Call me crazy, but if you ever get the chance to see beets growing in a field in the late spring or summer, then take a minute and lay down in the dirt (right down there with the bugs and stuff) and look down the row in the space made by the leaves arching over. Particularly if the sun is out it is pretty wondrous (at least to this dorky little scribbler).

- Boschi

[Kieli]

As for my muse, she's a bit irregular and entirely too fond of drink.

That's the problem with muses, wanton harlots that they are....they put out only when they want, they drink up all of your best scotch and kick you out of your own bed whenever they bloody well get the inclination. *sigh* The things we do to have them around.

Yeah, kinda wish I'd left Liege in the box, but see note above re: muse propensities. The whole trite angst thing tends to bubble up at times like those. Please excuse.

No excuse necessary. The trouble with reusing imagery like those found in Liege is that they're easy...it's tough to come up with original ways to put those feelings that are so common into words. Some days trite just fits *shrug*

And Hieronymus is in fact the Man...

Indeed. Some of my favourite works of his are The Seven Deadly Sins, The Garden of Earthly Delights and Paradise and Hell.

Call me crazy, but if you ever get the chance to see beets growing in a field in the late spring or summer, then take a minute and lay down in the dirt (right down there with the bugs and stuff) and look down the row in the space made by the leaves arching over. Particularly if the sun is out it is pretty wondrous (at least to this dorky little scribbler).

That's what drew me to Untitled....the perspective of a gardener. It never occurred to me to look at growing things in this manner. There are dual meanings throughout, both religious in undertone and not.

Nautilus was interesting but, in the last stanza, you speak of holding the shell to your ear. If I recall correctly, conch shells are the ones that are often used for that purpose. But I noted your author's comment so I won't comment further on that.

The first piece shows us where your true talent lay: scenery...internal vision. The last two are merely for show. That's just MHO for whatever it's worth.

K.

[Boschi]

Allrighty - insomnia, deadlines galore and all I can think to do is write rambling, incoherent discourses and try to pass them off as poetry. I really need to sit on this stuff for a couple days after I write it - let it digest a bit and then tweak it.... nah - never happen. Every once in a while I come up with something I think is good, but mostly I just vomit up thoughts I need to get rid of. Maybe someday I'll twist them in to something resembling art, but in the meantime, here's a looong one.

Much wordier than I usually care for - let me know how bad 'tis. Better, perhaps, converted to an essay type thang? Or just entirely trite and uninteresting? Ever try to describe a sunset to someone? The most frustrating exercise in triteness - which is what this feels like.

Many thanks to you all for tolerating my public learning curve.

Hope to hell my ex isn't reading this - that would just be weird.

*****************************************
Northern spring

This season I have driven across nights and flat plain mornings,
light creasing the east in clean burning gold.

Spoke to you past midnight and through to six,
an empty seat I filled with words to make the wonder real.

Tonight
moons chase through ponds, hide in mists, skip past me in leaps.

At sunset
a column of buzzing black filled the sky fifty feet high,
then blew away, dispersed to find warm red.

This afternoon
I walked in a wind tossed field, lady slippers scattered at my feet
in such quantity I felt courted.

This morning
I climbed the aged stairs of an abandoned farmhouse,
barn swallows winging around me, disturbed in their peace of peeling wallpaper rooms and broken windows.
From the steep peaked roof I could see miles of prairie, hear echoes of a home.

A full day;
my eyes wide all the time, wanting us both to see.

I am tired now, and the sky has stretched out cold and clear.
Pulling to a stop on a dark ridge, coffee and stale air blow away in a flash as I step quietly from the cab.

You are not here.
I have made this for you, the moon and the wind.
I have gathered the flowers for you at my feet,
held a swallow in my hand so that you can feel it's fluttering heart.

Written with my words,
illustrated by sight,
bound by need and sent south,
where it waits by your bedside,
unopened.

I came here to feel myself in the emptiness - and it stretches around me now,
black and rolling for miles.
Breath tugs and billows white, then rushes back in to me,
sharp and alive, filling my chest until lights spring up in the north:
Aurora borealis flickering in waves that tease the dark,
a color not quite green or gold.

This is indescribable, untransmittable.

This is the last page.
This is a page of white before the back cover falls.

It is 3 a.m. and I know you are not home.

At 5:38 the sun will rise,
light creasing the the new page of the east in clean burning gold.

- Boschi

***************************************

[Kieli]

Actually, I really like this. I sometimes think you're hindering yourself by simply writing poetry. This has a monologuish feel that I personally prefer (maybe it's because I have a slight bias against poetry as a whole). This is poetic, dramatic but heartfelt. I reiterate, your truest talent lay in imagery and it definitely shines through here.

[SJ]

Yeah your writing is very visual and that had a nice etheral feel to it

[Boschi]

Keili and SJ - Thanks y'all.

I had hoped to log in and meet the muse mid-stride. Read your comments, re-read Untitled and Northern Spring, and it just made me feel good. Wanted to make something nice for you, but nothing strikes me at the 'mo. Hope you don't mind the reply without additional scribblings, but needed to share a rare moment of satisfied warm fuzzies. (My inner cynic is screaming at me for using that phrase... ah-well, must be hormones.)

Do my best to post something new soon.

- Boschi

[onyxsundrops]

Much wordier than I usually care for - let me know how bad 'tis. Better, perhaps, converted to an essay type thang? Or just entirely trite and uninteresting?

Personally, I don't mind wordy poems (obviously). I know that many writers can get the point across with a few simple lines/stanzas, but I like a little extra wording sometimes. Maybe it's just me. Anyway, great poem. I really enjoyed the imagery that you used within each stanza.

Yvonne

[tcurti3]

I am soooo poetry-challenged that it's laughable. I blame it on my junior English teacher, who took sadistic glee in making students memorize and recite 'The Bells' by Poe. I really do love your word choice and your imagery, though--crystal clear, particularly in 'Northern Spring'. Any chance we could see some prose (i.e. something I can speak of without feeling like a total idiot)? Or is there some out there and I just haven't found it?

[vix84]

Hey Boschi,

This is a beautiful poem. I really don't see the wordiness as a problem; if anything, I found myself wanting to read much more than you gave us, which can only be a good thing.

I don't think your work needs defining as either poetry or prose. You put great words and images together and they are a joy to read. I could read this over and over (maybe I will...).

Thanks for sharing!

[Boschi]

Just fiddlin' around with some...


Sweet Procrastination

The responsibility
of my task
glowers
down ........... while
I ............... sleeping
sink ............ smile
blinking
in to the smell
of her clean sheets

- Boschi

[Boschi]

****************************************
Yvonne -

OK - I am starting to feel like a total ass for the comments I made about your poetry. Ya see I have this bad habit of trying to say good things and instead sticking my foot so far down my throat I'm choking on knee.

I like all your wordies - long and short. Wordiness of the onyxsundrops variety much good. And I was just really impressed by how you've kept writing and your work has gotten more refined. Beautiful at the beginning, beautiful at the end, but it definitely has evolved over time which I think is wonderful. So... um, yeah - gonna stop now because if the other foot goes in my mouth too then walking is going to be a bitch....

Many thanks for reading - very glad you've enjoyed some of my stuff.

**********************************************
tcurti3 -

Yeah, yeah - whatever. You with the self-deprecation. You are reading my writing, so you obviously have highly refined poetic sensibilities

Ya know, yes, there are a couple of fan fic efforts by me in Pens - one unfinished, one part of a challenge, both royally suck. So personally I say, stick with the awkward poetry.

Thanks fer reading!

************************************************8
vix84 -

Don't read it too much - you are bound to start noticing problems! Thanks so much for the words "they are a joy to read", which made my evening.

I was pleased with how Northern Spring came together, but the act of writing it was sort of a final page for me too. It was (probably obviously) based on an experience of mine and I think I said all I need to about that time (at least for a while). Hopefully I will be able to come up with something else that will make you wish for more.

********************************

Thanks again y'all.

- Boschi

[SJ]

Great poem.

[Boschi]

OK, so more in the monologue-y vein. Just fer you Kieli (actually not "for" you, as in not about you, because that would be kinda stalkery weird...)

Definitely a work in progress, but frankly wanted a little feedback. Perhaps my psyche is just screaming for attention today - who knows.
I fear pompousness (pomposity?). Call me out on it if it gets too bad.
At anyrate - here tis.


********************************
Season

If you were to die then I would see you buried next to bees;
next to white stacked hives surrounded by blooming chives, by mint and borage, by honeysuckle, vetch, clover and balm.

I have spent all these days wondering at your taste - thinking of day and sweat and the fine down of your arm tickling my lips; how the skin would smell up close: the heat of sun warmed life, of salt and sky, of dust and work.
Dust. Always some how dust. Not the fouled still chalk of closed spaces, but the fine mix of clay and air that settles companionably on to skin. In to skin.
Could I taste sunlight on your salted arms, your face, your back?
Could I taste that gold and earth and wonder in you?

Life is salt. Savory motion and slippery limbs.

When you still (if you must) and the cool shroud of soil covers you, then let your body lend it's gold to nectar, to pollen fat in the bloom, teasing bees from the hive and sending them back to dance on bobbling orange legs.

Let them make from you bright sweetness; liquid amber of you, you, you to be devoured through tears and every day after. On biscuits, on finger tips; stirred in teas and slathered on fat lamb roasted and rich layered cakes.

Sunlight on my lips.

- Boschi

[Kieli]

OK, so more in the monologue-y vein. Just fer you Kieli (actually not "for" you, as in not about you, because that would be kinda stalkery weird...)

LOL....I didn't figure you for a stalker anyways so....but it's nice to have dedicated works....it's like getting early Christmas prezzies (from you too Tcurti3)

As always, I love your imagery. I love the sweetness contrasted with other tastes: salty, somewhat bitter (the clay taste) back to sweetness. You're wishing for that person to remain sweet to you forever as part of something else that you adore and love. That way you can always feel her (or him, who knows?) within you, around you and that others will feel them too. Yep...monologue is definitely your style.

[Boschi]

Found this waiting for a second edit and decided it didn't need it. Feel free to disagree - am contemplating a general edit of all things in this thread anyway.

Hope this finds everyone a happy survivor of the holiday season...

- Boschi

**************************************

Untitled

I watched you spinning
from the window of the shop across the street.
The sweet ache breaking through me a familiar dawn,
a sunrise no less for its number.

We were sleeping there - tasting in hopes of being tasted.
Burrowing behind our papers,
rooting for pleasure on our plates,
in the linen
curled in our laps,
like our hands,
like our heads,
tucked under,
under,
straining to reach our stomachs and the only passage left from the womb.
Ouroborous of hollow eyes,
pulling us inward towards our emptiness.

I watched you spinning
from the window.
from my navel centered orbit.
from the shop behind the glass across the street.

Three times removed and still the light as it struck you
struck me.

You were spinning, upright and joyful
and I witnessed it.

You danced alone, neither vain nor apologetic,
simply drinking in sunlight, sweating out relief, each exhalation pushing out what a moment before you drew in;
completely changed,
transformed in the passages of your chest, the stomp of your feet and the curve of your mouth.
Mere air exchanged
for song.

You are the sun,
perfect in your place.

*************************************

[Kieli]

Found this waiting for a second edit and decided it didn't need it. Feel free to disagree - am contemplating a general edit of all things in this thread anyway.

Hope this finds everyone a happy survivor of the holiday season...

- Boschi

**************************************

Untitled

I watched you spinning
from the window of the shop across the street.
The sweet ache breaking through me a familiar dawn,
a sunrise no less for its number.

We were sleeping there - tasting in hopes of being tasted.
Burrowing behind our papers,
rooting for pleasure on our plates,
in the linen
curled in our laps,
like our hands,
like our heads,
tucked under,
under,
straining to reach our stomachs and the only passage left from the womb.
Ouroborous of hollow eyes,
pulling us inward towards our emptiness.

I watched you spinning
from the window.
from my navel centered orbit.
from the shop behind the glass across the street.

Three times removed and still the light as it struck you
struck me.

You were spinning, upright and joyful
and I witnessed it.

You danced alone, neither vain nor apologetic,
simply drinking in sunlight, sweating out relief, each exhalation pushing out what a moment before you drew in;
completely changed,
transformed in the passages of your chest, the stomp of your feet and the curve of your mouth.
Mere air exchanged
for song.

You are the sun,
perfect in your place.

*************************************

Good lord....could you love this person any more? It's like you're in the Land of No Pleasure, until you saw this person...then life became a a joy, something worth living and finding some worth in your love and yourself. As always, great stuff!

[Boschi]

Kieli -

Dear god, is it that over the top? >Sigh< Suppose it is. Rather wish you hadn't asked that question so bluntly. Ugly ol' reality.

And the answer to your question: yeah, I could. I think. Highly speculative contemplation as it would require reciprocation on her part - a large improbability. (Would impossibility be better, or worse?)

Maybe I should begin writing a eulogy for my old pragmatic cynicism, its condition seems terminal:


"Oh wit most dry and smile most wry,
who dragged down dreams not meant to fly,
who murdered childish hope in sleep
the quiet of the house to keep;

Your chair awaits, your pipe unsmoked
rests lonely next to bourbon soaked
notes from days of ordered bliss.
Your sure, dismissive laugh I miss.

... "

Oh bother, I just can't go on, I'm simply overcome. I do miss the old fuck... >swoons, grabs for bourbon<

- Boschi

[Kieli]

[quote="Boschi"]Kieli -

Dear god, is it that over the top? >Sighswoons, grabs for bourbon

[SJ]

Great writing.

[Boschi]

Allrighty.

So here is a preliminary try at something that is rather dear to me. I expect to continue editting it and poking it for a while, but it felt ready for a first showing.

As I said - rather dear to me, so I feel compelled to offer a respectful but firm reminder that this and all my other works are to stay on the kittenboard, and here only, unless you have specific permission from me. (Which sounds really egotistical, but is more just really defensive - they may suck, but they're mine, ya'know?)

It has occurred to me that the first stanza is perhaps enough, and should simply stand on it's own. I'd appreciate opinions on this.

- Boschi

************************************************
Flight

Ten thousand black runes
tumbling
bleeding across the sky in raucous love
proclaiming existence - proof.
These things have been.
We are the ashes. We are the burnt pages of the past.

Consumed by days and minutes,
orbital clocks of irrelevant scale.
These things are written;
tumbling now, an unstoppable declaration of histories.

We have been uttered and silence is forever gone.

In the winter sky, in the still when the wind dies,
I have witnessed a lone crow transect the grey plane above.
I have heard nothing but the coarse whisper of dark feathers and in that moment
known more of being than before.

I exist.
Declare me.
Write me in bold strokes or soft curves. It does not matter.
As it is written it is consumed, consumed but still the ink remains.
All colors to iridescent black that curls and crackles in the flame of the ever-fading now;
orange worms combust the last breath of every moment in writhing lines -
the true language forever new, forever lost.

Yet all remains.
Burnt pages scatter to every corner of the world,
dark feathers that still crackle,
that whisper.
Betrayers of secrets.
Proclaimers.
Witnesses.

Will you consume me when I die?
Will unblinking eyes regard my empty ones before the beak so delicately plucks?
May you see what I have seen:
the colors of heartbreak, my kitchen window, the blush of shivering skin.
Transmute.
Distill.
Make of me black ink to write the world.


- Boschi

****************************************