Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Some Days



Some Days
By Brian Ernest Brown

Some days
Are better than others

Some days
You just want to hide under the covers

Some days
Surprise you with possibility

Some days
Just slap you into sensibility

Some days
Offer the promise of a new love

Some days
You'll make peace with loneliness in leiu of

Some days
You'll feast on a banquet of delight

Some days
You'll make do with what's in sight

Some days
Everything turns up roses

Some days
Everyone is turning up their noses

Some days
You'll feel happy and secure

Some days
You'll just simply have to demure

Some days
That's just life

Some days
Either harmony or maybe strife


Sunday, February 10, 2019

5 Days of Eros Writing Challenge Day 1: Hunger


I've taken up a writing challenge with Fleassy Malay entitled:

#5DaysOfEros

Day 1
Hunger

"Eating Glass"
By Brian Ernest Brown

Sometimes I find myself eating glass in my dreams.

I feel an odd compulsion to take a bite and then another.

I watch horrified and yet transfixed at the very sight.

Wondering what the outcome might be.

My hunger for you is much the same as my dream of eating glass.

Deliciously alluring but most assuredly deadly.

And I intuitively know the outcome.

You would shred me from the inside out.

Even still, I ache with an insatiable craving for you.


Friday, February 8, 2019

Broken


"Broken"
By Brian Ernest Brown

You broke everything you touched
You broke everyone you touched
You had even broken yourself
Only I didn't yet know how badly

You broke cars
You broke glass
You broke dishes
You broke phones
You broke momentos
You broke furniture
You broke promises
You broke decency
You broke sobriety
You broke me for the first time

As time went by you broke others
You broke relationships
You broke hearts
You broke them
You broke trust
You broke jobs
You broke life
You broke her
You broke us

I should have known
You'd break me again
I should have known
You'd break me again

In my hubris
I thought I could
Unbreak you

In our breakup
You left me so broken
That I've lost my pieces
And I'm left less than whole

In your brokenness
You break anything and anyone
But it is you who is broken most
And I wonder if you can ever be whole

The real heartbreak is that
I'd risk breaking again
Just to help you
Put your pieces
Back together
If I could


The Indispensable Man or Splash All You Wish


The Indispensable Man
By Saxon White Kessinger

Sometime when you're feeling important;
Sometime when your ego's in bloom;
Sometime when you take it for granted,
You're the best qualified in the room:
Sometime when you feel that your going,
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions, And see how they humble your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining,
Is a measure of how much you'll be missed.
You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop, and you'll find that in no time, It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example,
Is to do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember, There's no indispensable man.


Sunday, April 29, 2018

The Scribe in the Woods



The Scribe in the Woods


A hedge of trees surrounds me, a blackbird’s lay sings to me, praise I shall not conceal.

Above my lined book the trilling of the birds sings to me.

A clear-voiced cuckoo sings to me in a grey cloak from the tops of the bushes.

May the Lord save me from judgement; well do I write under the greenwood.

-Ninth Century, Old Irish

Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Writing Rock Talk

Writing Rock Talk

By Brian Ernest Brown
6 June 1991


The wind rocks
the trees to talk
as I sit on the rock
colored with chalk
of loves crock
now we talk...

She offers,
“let us write
of our plight
of what’s wrong and right
in a poets sight tonight.”

I think,
I can’t write
on command
putting together words that band
like pearls in a strand
that rhyme and make sense!

The Not Quite Dead Yet Poet’s Society
will eventually come to notoriety
some may call this piety
I call it Writing Rock Talk!

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

After the Dinner Party


After the Dinner Party
By Robert Penn Warren

You two sit at the table late, each, now and then,
Twirling a near-empty wine glass to watch the last red
Liquid climb up the crystalline spin to the last moment when
Centrifugality fails: with nothing now said.

What is left to say when the last logs sag and wink?
The dark outside is streaked with the casual snowflake
Of winter's demise, all guests long gone home, and you think
Of others who never again can come to partake

Of food, wine, laughter, and philosophy --
Though tonight one guest has quoted a killing phrase we owe
To a lost one whose grin, in eternal atrophy,
Now in dark celebrates some last unworded jest none can know.

Now a chair scrapes, sudden, on tiles, and one of you
Moves soundless, as in hypnotic certainty,
The length of table. Stands there a moment or two,
Then sits, reaches out a hand, open and empty.

How long it seems till a hand finds that hand there laid,
While ash, still glowing, crumbles, and silence is such
That the crumbling of ash is audible. Now naught's left unsaid
Of the old heart-concerns, the last, tonight, which

Had been of the absent children, whose bright gaze
Over-arches the future's horizon, in the mist of your prayers.
The last log is black, while ash beneath displays
No last glow. You snuff candles. Soon the old stairs

Will creak with your grave and synchronized tread as each mounts
To a briefness of light, then true weight of darkness, and then
That heart-dimness in which neither joy nor sorrow counts.
Even so, one hand gropes out for another, again.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Broken Yet Beating

Broken Yet Beating
By Brian Ernest Brown

I've always known
I'll die of a broken heart

Shattered like glass
It was preventable and yet inevitable

Only thing worse
Than a fate such as this

Is most assuredly
Living with a beating broken heart

Thursday, June 30, 2016

So Many, Too Many


So Many, Too Many
By Brian Ernest Brown

So many wounded people.
So many ill people.
So many frightened people.
So many sad people.
So many frustrated people.
So many angry people.
So many lost people.
So many hiding people.

Many. So many. Too many.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

My petals have drooped a little today
Even as my prayers have risen.

Tomorrow's a new day.
Bless it.
+++

Thursday, January 7, 2016

If I Ever Said I Love You





If I Ever Said I Love You
By Brian Ernest Brown

If I ever said I love you
I mean it even now

If I ever held you in my heart
I hold you even now

Love never gives up 

Saturday, December 5, 2015

The Glassblower's Heart


The Glassblower's Heart
By Sarah E. Skwire
It is not stable. It has never been.
It's fifteen thousand brittle, jagged shards
Which impersonate a whole. Innately marred,
It could explode at any time--just when
You least expect it, like as not.
The threat of loss and injury is all too real.
You have to heat it. You have to anneal
The work you've made.
If you don't you might get
By for days or weeks, but destruction looms
Unavoidably. Make the choice yourself--
Place it in the fire. Leave it on the shelf.
Cause pain and save it, or spare it for doom.
I am not stable. I am not entire.
Heal me. Anneal me. Thrust me in the fire.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Word Painting



Word Painting
By Brian Ernest Brown

It is often said,
a picture paints a thousand words.

It is also true,
that words can paint a vivid picture.

Albeit sometimes,
the phrase, fuck my life, says it all.

Monday, May 4, 2015

Good Intentions

Good Intentions
By Brian Ernest Brown

11 March 2001 

Oh, how my good intentions
swirl around me throughout the day.
Like ghosts they seem to haunt me,
but they never fly away.

Those gossamer threads they lead me,
down a well worn path in life.
A path I've taken too often,
a course that’s wrought with strife.

Oh how they do collect,
Until I don’t know where to start.
And my strength they seem to bleed,
like leaches on my heart.

Too many things I mean to do,
Too many people I need to see,
It’s so very much to accomplish,
Maybe today, I’ll just leave them be!

Friday, April 10, 2015

Hoping For Resurrection


Hoping For Resurrection
By Brian Ernest Brown

on the back of an ass
riding into town
faint praise
turns to criticism
all too often


in a garden of woe
lies are the seeds
and betrayal
is the perennial bloom
thorns are treacherous


hanging betwixt
heaven and earth
suffering and forsaken
lost and alone
crying out

love and grace
the only gift to give
dying to self
and hoping
for a resurrection



Gift of Love


Gift of Love
By Brian Ernest Brown

love
it's all
i have to give
i made it for you and you alone
it was created from my image and experience of you
it's an original work of art crafted by me for you alone
i'm sorry it may not be what you want
i'm sorry it may not be what you need
it's all i have to give
accept it or not
it's yours
love

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Desires of the Heart


Desires of the Heart
By Brian Ernest Brown


What do I desire?

I desire freedom, the kind that encourages unconditional love and self-expression.  

I desire intimacy and by that I don't exclusively mean sex.  For me intimacy, begins with small shared experiences between people - a touch, a whisper, an embrace, a kiss, a caress, a breath, a knowing glance.  

I desire honesty, the kind of honesty that is respectful of everyone involved but which also allows for individual privacy and self-concern.  

I desire passion, not just between the sheets but for life itself.  Passion that fuels a zest for life and the diversity which it offers.  A passion that makes someone search for the end of the rainbow, knowing with an intense certainty that they'll find it.  

I desire exploration and adventure. Exploration not only of the world around us but also of the world within us. To discover who and what we are and to live that truth bravely and unapologetically. Adventuring and learning about different cultures and people as we go. Celebrating the beauty and diversity we find along the journey.

I desire intelligent conversation, the kind that keeps you up late at night because you just can't control the thoughts being stimulated in your head, where people experience an intellectual intimacy shared through thoughts and ideas.  

I desire grace, the grace and forgiveness to be fully human and fully alive and to share the same with another.  

I desire forgiveness and compassion because I'm only human too but not just for me but a forgiveness and compassion shared with others because only then can we experience it ourselves.  

I desire love, the kind of love that endures and is shared.

I desire whimsical spontaneity that encourages impish delight.  

I desire sex so hot that you drench the sheets and so tender you never want it to end.

Those are some of my desires but most of all, I simply want to be part of the happiness, joy, and love of other people's lives on whatever level they will allow.

These are some of the desires of my heart.

Monday, November 3, 2014

Perfect Love and Perfect Trust



















The Wiccan Rede

Bide ye Wiccan laws ye must, in perfect love and perfect trust.
Live and let live, fairly take and fairly give.
Form the circle thrice about to keep all evil spirits out.
Soft of eye, light of touch, speak ye little, listen much.
Deosil go by the waxing moon, singing out ye Witches' Rune.
Widdershins go by the waning moon, chanting out the baneful rune.
When the Lady's moon is new, kiss your hand to her times two.
When the rippling waters flow, cast a stone and truth ye'll know.
When ye have and hold a need, harken not with others' greed.
With a fool no seasons spend, lest ye be counted as his friend.
Merry meet and merry part, bright the cheeks and warm the heart.
Mind ye threefold law ye should, three times bad and three times good.
When misfortune is anow, wear the star upon thy brow.
True in Love ye must ever be, lest thy love be false to thee.
In these eight words, the Wiccan Rede fulfill
"An' it harm none, do what thou wilt."




Sunday, October 12, 2014

My Name

My Name
By Brian Ernest Brown

what's in a name

it's certainly a beginning and yet also an end
born with a name full of hope, chained to a foisted definition

at another time eulogized on granite in a field full of the same, just a name

it's a package of expectations and remembrances shackled together by each letter

is it a definitive expression of who we are or simply a cage in which we must live

sometimes i wonder, what is my name

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Inevitable















Like a sunset, some things are inevitable.
And too like a sunset, the inevitable may just be as welcomed.
Darkness is near and it will be time to rest.
It is inevitable.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Masts at Dawn


Masts at Dawn
By Robert Penn Warren

Past second cock-crow yacht masts in the harbor go slowly white.

No light in the east yet, but the stars show a certain fatigue.
They withdraw into a new distance, have discovered our unworthiness. It is long since

The owl, in the dark eucalyptus, dire and melodious, last called, and

Long since the moon sank and the English
Finished fornicating in their ketches. In the evening there was a strong swell.

Red died the sun, but a dark wind rose easterly, white sea nagged the black harbor headland.

When there is a strong swell, you may, if you surrender to it, experience
A sense, in the act, of mystic unity with that rhythm. Your peace is the sea's will.

But now no motion, the bay-face is glossy in darkness, like

An old window pane flat on black ground by the wall, near the ash heap. It neither
Receives nor gives light. Now is the hour when the sea

Sinks into meditation. It doubts its own mission. The drowned cat
That on the evening swell had kept nudging the piles of the pier and had seemed

To want to climb out and lick itself dry, now floats free. On that surface a slight convexity
     only, it is like

An eyelid, in darkness, closed. You must learn to accept the kiss of fate, for

The masts go white slow, as light, like dew, from darkness
Condensed on them, on oiled wood, on metal. Dew whitens in darkness.

I lie in my bed and think how, in darkness, the masts go white.

The sound of the engine of the first fishing dory dies seaward. Soon
In the inland glen wakes the dawn-dove. We must try

To love so well the world that we may believe, in the end, in God.