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No exit
the night is a garden
in her perfect fear of us
who rave that everything must break
while government continues
what will become of doing business
with so busy a rust
Poems on the topic: rust
Poems on the topic “rust” on Poets.by.
Shipping news
all the news now
should go in the same ship with
our knavery and dissimulation
no great fleet
ships like unkissed bodies
nest together at night
take time to rust
Allowance
laying out clothes
I stand looking
at this day’s money
dry as rust
Indiscretion
how like a fine frost
my prayers fall on her ear
what ingratitude
the poor words of a liar
words that should stay private
expressed in rust
Tin soldier
I could join the war
glad as rust
I would go be the enemy
for an afternoon.
Ravished
missing heads and shrivelled petals
orotund with seed
corn-fed on extra syllables
trapped between the teeth
nearly reptilian our rictus
of gratitude for another sun
let us trust the rust within us
to paint our noble ruins red
as knotweed blossoms into lace
and devil’s-tail brandishes blue fruit
immune to anything that ravishes
without or within
they spread like miracules
their missionary impositions
as we lower our last dreams
into the earth
Rusty
A corrugated pipe
that stopped carrying water 20 years ago
after the hillside was clear-cut,
north side green with algae,
south side red as the center of Australia
& the only rust holes on top
where the rain has sought admittance:
I have been of little use
these past few decades
but I’m as full of holes as a flute
only the rarest wind can play
& in the right light
can almost be said to glow.
I will surrender to dissolution
but not right away.
I will give myself over to the patient
Before the fall
Pain
Like rust
You confused it for salt
It felt as intense as pleasure
Joy
Like oil
You confused for molasses
It felt like a balm to all your wounds
Love
Like fire
You confused it for candlelight
It felt like you could blow it out
Early Spring
It was that time of the year, cold and bleak, old dry leaves still on the ground, patches of snow
lingering everywhere in the landscape. I had passed the old cemetery hundreds of times. This
time there was a hint of sun.
early spring
rust down the side
of a gravestone
Abel Melveny
I bought every kind of machine that’s known—
Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers—
And all of them stood in the rain and sun,
Getting rusted, warped and battered,
For I had no sheds to store them in,
And no use for most of them.
And toward the last, when I thought it over,
There by my window, growing clearer
About myself, as my pulse slowed down,
And looked at one of the mills I bought—
Which I didn’t have the slightest need of,
As things turned out, and I never ran—
A fine machine, once brightly varnished,
And eager to do its work,
Now with its paint washed off—
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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