Where The Creek Used To Run

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1. Ad Invasions Advertisements, they’ve trashed the web, Somehow they’ve gotten into bed With common sense; ubiquitous And so intense, insistent As to cause offense, Intrusive and quite truculent, I would they should all go away. [Your Ad Here] But like the course of politics A stronger force reserves its place, Creates a vacuum in the space It […]...
2. Pejar Creek Deep in the meadow grass Easy stand the cattle, Lightly lock the young bulls In a mimic battle, Pride gathers with each shock, Every break and rally – That’s where the Pejar runs, Runs like a slip of silver through the valley. Softly as a thrush sings In the morning hushes, Softly sing the waters […]...
3. Success Comes To Cow Creek I sit on the tracks, A hundred feet from Earth, fifty from the Water. Gerald is Inching toward me As grim, slow, and Determined as a Season, because he Has no trade and wants None. It’s been nine months Since I last listened To his fate, but I Know what he will say: He’s the […]...
4. Good neighbours To my shame I’ve been mending fences again… A quaint habit I inherited from my father; He would rather fix a fence than parley Repair, and that it is where our views diverged. He said fences were meant to make good Neighbours. In the intervening years I had it Wrong, believing a fence was a […]...
5. The Choice Some inherit manly beauty, Some come into worldly wealth; Some have lofty sense of duty, Others boast exultant health. Though the pick may be confusing, Health, wealth, charm or character, If you had the chance of choosing Which would you prefer? I’m not sold on body beauty, Though health I appreciate; Character and sense of […]...
6. Golgotha Through darkness curves a spume of falling flares That flood the field with shallow, blanching light. The huddled sentry stares On gloom at war with white, And white receding slow, submerged in gloom. Guns into mimic thunder burst and boom, And mirthless laughter rakes the whistling night. The sentry keeps his watch where no one […]...
7. Santa Claus “HALT! Who goes there?” The sentry’s call Rose on the midnight air Above the noises of the camp, The roll of wheels, the horses’ tramp. The challenge echoed over all – “Halt! Who goes there?” A quaint old figure clothed in white, He bore a staff of pine, An ivy-wreath was on his head. “Advance, […]...
8. The Path RUNNING along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path. It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep, Between the legs of beech and yew, to where A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women Content themselves with the road and […]...
9. Echoes in an empty room The strident sounds of silence echo In a darkened room, a beggar’s tomb Of emptied space and barrenness, a Shameful waste, a bitter sadness. It violates all sense of being strips aside All causal meaning bound inside the shrinking Wrap that clings to surfaces debased, Insulates the tiny tap of time, a skulking Soulless mirthless […]...
10. Bank Robber I much admire, I must admit, The man who robs a Bank; It takes a lot of guts and grit, For lack of which I thank The gods: a chap ‘twould make of me You wouldn’t ask to tea. I do not mean a burglar cove Who climbs into a house, From room to room […]...
11. Vision Of The Archangels, The Slowly up silent peaks, the white edge of the world, Trod four archangels, clear against the unheeding sky, Bearing, with quiet even steps, and great wings furled, A little dingy coffin; where a child must lie, It was so tiny. (Yet, you had fancied, God could never Have bidden a child turn from the spring […]...
12. Ed Ed was a man that played for keeps, ‘nd when he tuk the notion, You cudn’t stop him any more’n a dam ‘ud stop the ocean; For when he tackled to a thing ‘nd sot his mind plum to it, You bet yer boots he done that thing though it broke the bank to do […]...
13. Growing Apart We knew their names Or thought we did, we knew their faces From an album of places we’d played In a fabulous lifetime of childhood shared. Events of our beginnings declared us united By common ascent, whether they liked it or cared, But they were there to be watched and we knew, If we dared […]...
14. So Let Us Dare How do we discover an antidote to each other, A faculty to commune in spiteful space? Our bleeding hearts and noxious farts Tie us in a hopeless chase to free this place Of evil parts that detonate without behest; Distress the poise we need to keep our sanity. Profanity which vents each manic crash Rends […]...
15. Flossie Cabanis From Bindle’s opera house in the village To Broadway is a great step. But I tried to take it, my ambition fired When sixteen years of age, Seeing “East Lynne” played here in the village By Ralph Barrett, the coming Romantic actor, who enthralled my soul. True, I trailed back home, a broken failure, When […]...
16. The Sentry We’d found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew, And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell Hammered on top, but never quite burst through. Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour, Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb. What murk of […]...
17. The Gardener IX: When I Go Alone at Night When I go alone at night to my Love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind Does not stir, the houses on both sides Of the street stand silent. It is my own anklets that grow loud At every step and I am ashamed. When I sit on my balcony and listen For his footsteps, leaves […]...
18. In the Highlands IN the highlands, in the country places, Where the old plain men have rosy faces, And the young fair maidens Quiet eyes; Where essential silence cheers and blesses, And for ever in the hill-recesses Her more lovely music Broods and dies O to mount again where erst I haunted; Where the old red hills are […]...
19. To Television Not a “window on the world” But as we call you, A box a tube Terrarium of dreams and wonders. Coffer of shades, ordained Cotillion of phosphors Or liquid crystal Homey miracle, tub Of acquiescence, vein of defiance. Your patron in the pantheon would be Hermes Raster dance, Quick one, little thief, escort Of the […]...
20. The Ungrateful Garden Midas watched the golden crust That formed over his steaming sores, Hugged his agues, loved his lust, But damned to hell the out-of-doors Where blazing motes of sun impaled The serrid roses, metal-bright. “Those famous flowers,” Midas wailed, “Have scorched my retina with light.” This gift, he’d thought, would gild his joys, Silt up the […]...
21. Silence I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence of the sick When their eyes roam about the room. And I ask: For the depths, Of what use is language? A […]...
22. At Carnoy Down in the hollow there’s the whole Brigade Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played, And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low. Crouched among thistle-tufts I’ve watched the glow Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade; And I’m content. To-morrow we must go To take […]...
23. Reconstruction So, the bank has bust it’s boiler! And in six or seven year It will pay me all my money back of course! But the horse will perish waiting while the grass is germinating, And I reckon I’ll be something like the horse. There’s the ploughing to be finished and the ploughmen want their pay, […]...
24. The pungent atom in the Air The pungent atom in the Air Admits of no debate All that is named of Summer Days Relinquished our Estate For what Department of Delight As positive are we As Limit of Dominion Or Dams of Ecstasy...
25. For you secular needs Somebody please explain, can you help Me understand; I’ve watched the weather Radar creep its colours on the screen And watched out of the window for the band Of welcome rain. One tells me its raining, The other looks unchanged. Are these events connected, are they Truly one and same? What should I watch For […]...
26. The Locker All the dull hollow clamor has died And what was contained, Removed, Reproved Adulation or sentiment, Left with the pungent darkness As remembered as the sudden light. Originally published by The Raintown Review...
27. Funny to be a Century Funny to be a Century And see the People going by I should die of the Oddity But then I’m not so staid as He He keeps His Secrets safely very Were He to tell extremely sorry This Bashful Globe of Ours would be So dainty of Publicity...
28. Blow, Bugle, Blow THE splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O […]...
29. The Proud Lady When Stiivoren town was in its prime And queened the Zuyder Zee, Its ships went out to every clime With costly merchantry. A lady dwelt in that rich town, The fairest in all the land; She walked abroad in a velvet gown, With many rings on her hand. Her hair was bright as the beaten […]...
30. Like Brooms of Steel Like Brooms of Steel The Snow and Wind Had swept the Winter Street The House was hooked The Sun sent out Faint Deputies of Heat Where rode the Bird The Silence tied His ample plodding Steed The Apple in the Cellar snug Was all the one that played....
31. Sonnet 26: Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written embassage To witness duty, not to show my wit- Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But that I hope some good […]...
32. Sonnet XXVI Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, To thee I send this written embassage, To witness duty, not to show my wit: Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, But that I hope some good […]...
33. Grief If grief could burn out Like a sunken coal The heart would rest quiet The unrent soul Be as still as a veil But I have watched all night The fire grow silent The grey ash soft And I stir the stubborn flint The flames have left And the bereft Heart lies impotent...
34. Schroeder the Fisherman I sat on the bank above Bernadotte And dropped crumbs in the water, Just to see the minnows bump each other, Until the strongest got the prize. Or I went to my little pasture, Where the peaceful swine were asleep in the wallow, Or nosing each other lovingly, And emptied a basket of yellow corn, […]...
35. Henry Tripp The bank broke and I lost my savings. I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River And I made up my mind to run away And leave my place in life and my family; But just as the midnight train pulled in, Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green And Martin Vise, and […]...
36. The Children The children are all crying in their pens And the surf carries their cries away. They are old men who have seen too much, Their mouths are full of dirty clothes, The tongues poverty, tears like puss. The surf pushes their cries back. Listen. They are bewitched. They are writing down their life On the […]...
37. The God Of Common-Sense My Daddy used to wallop me for every small offense: “Its takes a hair-brush back,” said he, “to teach kids common-sense.” And still to-day I scarce can look a hair-brush in the face. Without I want in sympathy to pat a tender place. For Dad declared with unction: “Spare the brush and spoil the brat.” […]...
38. Velvet Shoes Let us walk in the white snow In a soundless space; With footsteps quiet snd slow, At a tranquil pace, Under veils of white lace. I shall go shod in silk, And you in wool, White as white cow’s milk, More beautiful Than the breast of a gull. We shall walk through the still town […]...
39. Fall Understand the language Of fall, approaching: Cold mornings Drawing your bundled warmth; Sailing-leaf afternoons, The enchantment of melancholy, Departure etched In the bronze of light Whispering with the wind; Its shimmering tones marking time Like the strike of a gong, Soft, yet insistent. (2000)...
40. Not On It The new chum’s polo pony was the smartest pony yet The owner backed it for the Cup for all that he could get. The books were laying fives to one, in tenners; and you bet He was on it. The bell was rung, the nags came out their quality to try, The band played, “What […]...