vanquished

Tags

bashfulbadgersblog, blog, carrie mathison, claire danes, homeland, peter quinn, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, rupert friend

he was broken, beaten,

almost into submission,

his limbs disobedient,

recalcitrant children

that won’t keep up,

that he has to drag along behind him.

 

his brain short-circuiting,

supplying the wrong words,

or nothing at all.

a blankness in his mind

where reason used to be.

 

it seems now

he is always

in the process

of falling.

and her arms

are weary

of catching him.

 

she has no strength left

to hold him up,

never mind the will.

he’s sapped it all

over long sad months

of not trying hard enough.

 

her debt can never be repaid.

the account is written in his blood.

his body bears the scars

of unrequited love.

 

can he help

wanting more

than a kind hand

on his shoulder,

a soft voice

in his ear every

now and then?

 

can he help

seeking to lay

his head down

on her beating heart,

to just close his eyes

for a minute,

and breathe her in?

Poem about Quinn & Carrie. Photo of Rupert Friend as Peter Quinn in Homeland.

Please also see secret squirrel blog on Quinn (Rupert Friend)/Carrie (Claire Danes)/Homeland.

‘wolfman agenda’

Tags

alejandro rose-garcia, bashfulbadgersblog, blog, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, shakey graves, wolfman agenda

it’s the lonesome sound

of the north wind outside

a mountain cabin

in a winter deep as forever

in an old fairy tale;

where a jilted lover hanged himself

one desperate christmas morning,

his feet swinging loose and free

in old sports socks from a used to be

a dollar store, threadbare at the heels

as the fabric of his life,

wrung out in its final spin.

it’s the lostness of a traveller

weary of new horizons and

hungry in his bones for home.

it’s the fierce and burning longing

that repossessed his soul.

 

Video is Shakey Graves’s ‘Wolfman Agenda’ from album Nobody’s Fool.

cassidy

Tags

70s, bashfulbadgersblog, blog, david cassidy, one of those nights, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest

a song from a 70s heartthrob

effervesces from the speakers

with the sweet surprise

of sherbert fizzing lightly

on your tongue.

 

Video is David Cassidy and the Partridge Family performing ‘One of Those Nights’.

denial

Tags

angela, bashfulbadgersblog, blog, claire danes, jared leto, jordan catalano, my so-called life, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, school

the boy who kissed her

for hours on end

so that their lips

were bruised and swollen

passes her in the hall

like she no longer exists.

she has to pinch herself

to check she’s still real.

 

she has, tragically,

all the time in the world to wonder

if the whole involved drama

took place inside the crazy

confines of her own head.

 

her hand in the soft

lushness of his hair,

his hot rapid panting

on the back of her neck,

moments when it seemed

nothing could separate them.

 

when their breathing

fell into rhythm

and their hearts beat as one,

when they were molten,

flowing into each other,

uninterrupted.

 

now he turns his back

decisively, to make a point,

cold and hard and done,

stranding her on the tide

of his brusque dismissal,

random flotsam in his wake.

 

her face registers the hurt,

her eyes that can’t tell lies.

it hits her like a knife twisting

in the back of the throat.

her heart knew no compromise.

A previous poem about Angela (Claire Danes) and Jordan (Jared Leto) from My So-called Life can be found here.

wasteland

Tags

2016, elvis, memphis, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest

we traipse through memphis in a sad dry dusk,

along the never-ending heartbroken boulevard,

busted concrete cooling in the vast vacant lots,

decades of trampled neglect and born again defeat,

once thriving concerns derelict and barb-wired off,

exposed like the underside of an upturned rock.

the stench of the hot punishment of the day,

fades to a less aggressive version of itself,

as if someone remote-controlled it down

in time with the dwindling brilliance,

and you feel the earth decide enough’s enough

and gently ease the pressure off.

lament

Tags

2016, cumberland gap, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, regret

on a lonely night with no prospects

you choose to wallow in regrets.

even unsummoned,

they rise up all around you

like cemetery corpses

in a bad zombie b movie,

impossible to ignore.

they compete for attention

and you register each one,

a bulb being drained of energy by degrees,

till your light is faint and faltering,

stricken and enfeebled,

and you have no strength to break free.

 

Photo of Cumberland Gap by Belinda

shiftless

Tags

2016, blog, mondegreen, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest

you tumbleweed from town to town

breathing dust on deserted main streets.

red warning lights blink mysteriously

on the dashboard of your rental car.

roll into a tire shop where you’re left

unexpectedly to your own devices

in the dazzling glare of the yard,

without knowing what’s going on

longing for a cool place in the shade,

dreaming of a time when you can

slow as you walk in the sand.

 

This poem originated from a misheard Bruce Springsteen lyric in ‘Born to Run’. Instead of ‘Oh some day girl I don’t know when/We’re going to get to that place/Where we really wanna go/And we’ll walk in the sun’, I heard the last couplet as ‘Where we really want to slow/As we walk in the sand’, which I thought beyond romantic even though I suppose it didn’t really rhyme.

 

 

distance

Tags

2016, jared leto, jordan catalano, my so-called life, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest

he’s far away in his head

from bullies in the hall at break.

whereas thoughts fizz

fruitlessly in her skull

like a wasp caught in a jam jar.

he’s not wasting time

contriving

clever comebacks

he’ll never dare utter.

he is removed from pain,

absenting himself

from the narrow worlds

of hurt and revenge,

refusing to engage,

his grey eyes as clear

and uncompromised

as a winter sky.

[My So-called Life was the best high school drama ever made.]

circumscribed

Tags

2016, cincinnati, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest, rainbow, sunset

I gaze out at a tie-dye sky.

think about that action

of stubbing out a cigarette,

so mundane and intimate,

intrinsically cinematic.

 

a hollywood cliché.

 

I can only ever see

the corner of a rainbow

from my suburban backyard,

the whole eclipsed,

obscured by buildings, cranes and trees.

 

contemplate meanwhile

the sadness of a grubby lace curtain

fluttering in the window breeze

for all the world as if it’s free.

 

Photo of Cincinnati sunset by Belinda

down and out

Tags

2015, bars, beale street, memphis, NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, poem, poem in a white ribbed vest

I liked you from the start

with your bashful smile

and grime-caked nails,

your nervous hands clutching

each other in muted panic

whenever strangers loomed too close,

whether bearing alms or malice,

to your sacred safe place

by the old subway entrance.

 

I didn’t know but I should have guessed

the thirstiness that hits you hard

late afternoons when the bars’

dark interiors beckon.

how it sets off a clarion in your skull,

your palms start to tingle and sweat,

and a purpose possesses you,

swallows you whole.

 

you settle easy for a spell,

briefly anaesthetised,

disconnected from the world’s clamour

by the clear cool contents of a glass.

a moment of clarity

when it all makes sense

and then, before I know it,

you’ve become someone else

and I’m as unnecessary

as I’d always suspected.

 

Photo of Beale Street, Memphis from Belinda