Sonnet 6 - New Sonnet Cycle by Adam White, poet

Flooded with years of unshaken disgrace
 My sinful heart retains it's crooked shape.
It festers in it's own small, ugly space,
 Protected by a roll of yellowed tape,
Wrapped around to mask it's awful scars,
 It's bleak, tormented form all ripped and cracked.
Alone in nature underneath these stars,
 And forced to be unknown; to play and act.
With grace your tender hands caress it's flesh
 And soothe the itching cuts that break it's skin,
Then dressing them in gossamer and mesh,
 With eyes to heal the hurt it bears within.
  My life has never known of better days,
  Than these I spend recovering through your ways.




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Founders Fear, a poem by Adam White, poet

It's a sick world
And you are in it,
Crafting your picnic scenes
Alongside so many year old memories,
As falsified now as they were then.
Taking your little safety scissors
Cutting out my shape,
And joyfully pasting me in.

I am no paper doll.
I'm maddened, insane
At the cruelty of it.
The rueful day of a turning screw
Burrowed deeper in to my marrow.
Your hand holds the driver
And you just keep twisting.

I'd shake you hardest,
Rougher than I ever would,
'Til your lolling neck snapped,
'Til your metaphorical eyes dimmed
And triumph over falsehood reigned
And as a marionette,
You danced a truthful jig.

But I'm off and away,
With my injured heart,
and my shaking hands
And fear of the twice knocking door,
The wailing of the blind mockingbird,
The dark, the silent night,
Love and the happy morning.

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Bleak Hours by Adam White, poet

Time keeps arresting itself.
Each second delivering
Some new, humanising stroke
Of the sharp, satirising blade.

How should the next turn come?
The trilling of the telephone,
The despairing knock at the door,
The bad news rushing on undelayed.

Little agonies for me to swim through.
I'm left unsure what platitude to deliver,
Since (uncommonly) the pain is not my own.
You would think I'd be well versed.

Weeping over the driest gears,
I force sympathetic eyes to beam
And appreciate the run of bad luck
With which you seem to be cursed.

Black streaks flit through the air.
You deliver hurtful rhetoric,
Unreasonable blame strikes hot,
Sleep will follow for too tired minds.

Ignorant, wet noses search,
Blind to this toxic reality.
Kibble spills, tingling in to a bowl,
Happy, your wide mouths grind.

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at http://www.onestoppoetry.com
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Arrogance

A poet, in his or her arrogance,
Tries in vein to eff the ineffable.
As they do, as do I with lesser words.

It's like you're still here sometimes, teasing me,
Spreading a thick foam of complacency
Over all the awful things I had done.

It's like you lied when you said it's okay,
That I'd get better and get to move on
And all these memories would go away.

It's like you poured your warmth in to me and,
Boiling, burned my very core so I could
Never forget the pain of your passing.

It's like I can't find the right words to say
Whether I love your lingering presence,
Or hate the fact that I need it to stay.


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Sonnet 5 - New Sonnet Cycle by Adam White, poet

The time we get to share may seem so short,
 That every small pursuit can seem a waste.
The time you spend becoming learned, taught,
 Leaves a tang, a most cold and bitter taste.
I live these days in lonely, sombre thought
 And crave, long for you to stroll through the door,
But this hope is often drawn out all for naught,
 So seldom does hope grant what we ask for.
It's the times she does that make it all worthwhile,
 Like her gentle hand in guiding me to you,
When hopelessness walked a long and thorny mile
 With me in tow, all battered, bleeding, blue.
  These times are tough, but love will persevere,
  Our time apart just makes me want you here.

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Greyhound - a poem by Adam White, poet

My surroundings are dirty,
The thickness of the air eats through my skin,
Works it's way within until I am nothing.
My blood rebels at these bitter scents,
The stink of elderly flesh, camomile,
Dried apricot perfume on ancient clothes,
Tinged in the bath of cigarette smoke
These withering husks of younger men
Have for so long submerged themselves in.

Seven hours I have sat here,
In this seat sat in my so many other souls
That the dip formed by their (ample) buttocks
Seems to be swallowing my body whole.
I can feel their unwashed palms on my palms,
Knowing wherever I touch is drenched,
Swimming in the faecal pond of their bad habits,
Tainting this newfound world from the off,
Making it look greyer, sicklier, droll.

This summer day makes it so much worse.
Sunlight burns through the glass, becoming fake
And about as artificial as the plastic chairs,
Coated in their stain-ridden foam,
Decorated by some floral pattern
That would seem right at home
On some 70's family show set sofa,
That, perched in front of a crowd waiting to laugh,
Would arguably make me much more comfortable.

How I long for my bed, my house, my class,
The place I was before this maligned folly began
And my happy universe, now made turgid,
Entirely collapsed. How I regret,
How I weep for my lost Winters,
My lost, silent nights walking the streets,
Hand in hand with my faithful kin,
Clad in white as snow robes, happy,
On our journey to make the offering.

Nothing here appeals. The promise of aged blood,
Even spilled in His name would not satiate,
Would not satisfy His vengeful thirst,
As aged blood retains not life,
Nor potential enough to quench the arid storm
That spills forth from his open maw.
With blistered knees I'd crawl back to his bosom,
If only my righteous bitter God's raving heart would slow,
For the fact my offered tithe was great enough.

I would plunge and plunge a thousand times for you,
Break the hearts of lovers, children, grandchildren,
Brothers, pets and sisters all to make Him well.
To make Him well with me and bring me back,
To let me hold the blade as he has failed to do
For all the winter times that I have lived
And one year later feel the blade myself
And pass in to his mouth, his grace,
Become a part of his all-destroying form.

What more? The dance of yesterday is done.
My new partner is this knife, this knife to cut the bread,
To cut the skin, to cut the strings of lives
In quantity that alone would constitute no offering.
And what of value? What of moral code,
But for the fact that this bus, this dirty place,
This awful world provides such suffering,
And for their selfless ends comes mercy
In the paradise to which they're lead.

Inspired by my short story Greyhound Outta Oldtown

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Triolet - TV Star

The days have made you less precious to me,
Your liars eyes stare through my T.V screen.
You bounce now to a modern melody,
The sight has made you less precious to me.
Gone all your beauty, gone the memory,
Scratched off by this disgusting, silk draped scene
The view has made you less precious to me,
Your empty eyes stare through my T.V screen.


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Pastel Skin, a poem by Adam White, poet for One Shoot Sunday

Picture by Fee Easton

Your skin is a pastel reminder to me

Of a once close friend's actions.

Faced with death, faced with oblivion,

You'd smoke just to be contrary.

Beneath the ringlets though, I see your face,

Terror masked by a blue explosion,

The attempt at nonchalance,

The blatant lack of peaceful sleep.

You're dying and you know it.

I've got to wonder, got to wonder if,

In those final moments, when people weep over you,

Will you maintain that stoic face?

Will your stony stare show the cracks,

As the wearied muscles at the edges of your lips,

The corners of your mouth, the overtired skin,

Contort and bend to let your loved ones see,

As the truth of life is revealed to you,

The truth of life long known to those like me.

Ropes. Chains. Banishment. Eternity.

Unkind, unseeing, blind slavery,

Walking and walking and working,

Hammering more links for more chains

For more people every unknown day.

Posted for One Shoot Sunday on http://www.onestoppoetry.com

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Sonnet 4 - New Sonnet Cycle by Adam White, poet

Confusion reigns within the heart of me,
 Pressing it's will into my very core,
Weaving it's web with such complexity
 That I don't know what my addled mind is for.
At times I rage, at times I cry to you,
 At times the unfair world becomes a bane,
A blight whose pox would wane and then renew,
 With such swift cruelty I might seem insane.
Your power lies in knowing all my heart,
 Identifying all this subtle change
Taking that pain and pulling it apart
 To show the world is good and far less strange
  Than how my eyes would sometimes make it seem,
  When my days are blurred as awful waking dreams.


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Denial - a poem by Adam White, poet

Remember when we used to talk for hours under the old tree?
You were different then, smiling and well in my memory,
But I think that the reflection I see of you changed.

We'd climb old branches 'til we were higher than passers by could see,
It felt like we'd gone up higher than anyone else had,
Then we'd fight, intentionally tumbling to the ground.

Ha, we were some kind of sadists, torturing ourselves that way
'Til bits of us felt so sore they might fall off at any moment,
And such, your personality remains in my heart that way.

At times, I look to you, sitting quietly in a dark corner,
Staring the way you do and wonder if you remember like me.
I think probably you recall exactly as I do for various reasons.

For one, you were so ill that while we spent those long evenings alone
All we would talk about is how we wish we could exert such abandon again,
Kicking and flailing at each other among the bright greenery,
But there was no way I could ever kick and flail at you again,
Not since they said the words, The words that comes so often in our lives,
The words I've heard so many brutal times since...

Ignore it. It's a cowardly cop out answer they give when things are hard.
Haven't we done worse to each other than some persistent illness?
My shoulder still throbs when the weather is especially cold,

And you? That wallop on the head gave you so many new nicknames
And you said (though I doubt it was ever true) we should feel like bad-asses,
With your pirate eye-patch and me with my newly gammy bionic arm.

That was some summer. Much better than the one that followed at least.
The one with the words. The words that comes so often in our lives,
The words I've heard so many brutal times since...

And I can't get it out of my head. It's a torturous empathy
I feel I feel alone in the appreciation of it at times,
As I spout the ol' "fact of life" speech, and inside harbour the same plague.

You're sitting in the corner now and I can't help feeling guilty,
Blaming myself. Thinking that these things can be brought on by trauma,
By falling too hard from a tree one day and one shot too hard,
Losing most of the use of an eye, the headaches starting,
The people looking at me, like your mother did right after they were said,
Right after the words were said. The words that comes so often in our lives

The words I've heard so many brutal times since, from friends,
Loved ones, family, in computer labs and work place emails,
In hospitals and from despairing acquaintances all as allergic as I.

I stutter, I strain and I cry when nobody is looking except for you,
Fall to my knees at your feet as you cradle my face and smile,
But you smile through cracked, sickly lips that form no more breath.

So many times you sit there but can't have sat there for eleven years,
It's been eleven years since you left and still you look in on me
And I look back at you, my lost friend lovingly, longingly, guiltily.

What of me? Driven mad, self torturing just like we always did,
Still flinging myself nightly from tall, unseen, twisted nightmare trees
For the sake of it, for the hurt and the memory and the need.

The doctor said it with such finality to you, your family and me,
The sore thumb holding your hand as you collapsed for the second time
And your mother, her eyes, immediately turning vicious on me,
Her scapegoat possibly deservedly but she never said a word,
Not since they said the words, The words that comes so often in our lives,
The words I've heard so many brutal times since. "It's terminal" and "I'm sorry."


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Short Story - Greyhound Outta Oldtown by Adam White, poet

Joe sat alone in one of those cramped double seats that you get on Greyhound buses and felt thoroughly disappointed. So far, his great adventure out in to the real world had been a major let down. Everything about the inside of the bus was artificial. The chairs were hard, there was no room for his long, thick legs, the air smelled stale and everybody on board was old. This wouldn’t be so bad in most cases. He’d spent the vast majority of his life in the company of older people. In fact he didn’t know many people in his town younger than himself, at least not by any measure worth considering. His mother had carried all the way to term and overshot it by a few days and since the next breeding festival wasn’t for six months yet (the boys his age in the town were getting increasingly excited, the girls increasingly terrified.) there weren’t any “new” people to get to know back there for at least a year and some months.

This isn’t to say Joe is young. Joe was twenty-three and three quarters and had set off to make his way in the world, despite his parents insistence that he wasn’t ready to live anywhere but in the small, sleepy town he called home. The reason he felt so uncomfortable around these particular old people was that, despite making eye contact with many of them, throwing smiles to each and even attempting to talk to a couple, they’d all given him the cold shoulder. This was unusual to Joe, who was more accustomed to his neighbours, Mike and Doris, who were so kindly to him all of his life that he couldn’t imagine the elderly being anything except pleasant. In fact, the cracked old faces he was glancing at (now only from the corners of his eyes, as people are wont to do when they realize that somebody just doesn’t like them) seemed rather more horrifying to him now that he was trapped, sitting in the cramped confines of the bus as it trundled it’s way along the highway to God knows where.

To distract himself from all the ancient humanity of his surroundings, Joe took out a book. He’d not read a book before. He knew how to read of course. He’d learned how to read at school back in his hometown from all the leaflets and posters they’d been made to learn from. He had been excited and a little scared by what may be contained within that made books contraband where he came from. He cracked open the first page, read for a chapter or two and passed out.

When he woke, some three hours later, he was confused. The sun had moved from its previous low, morning cradle to being almost directly above the vehicle, and it was hot as all hell. The picture flying past the window was pretty much the same as it had been before he’d fallen asleep, except there was more corn now and far fewer houses.

Joe tried to rest his elbow on the sill of the window but it was too uncomfortable to fit his rather large elbows. He fidgeted in his seat to try to get cozy. Stupid, hard seats. Joe really wanted to go home.

More hours passed. He’d tried to read again but the book he had picked up at the stand at the bus station was about dragons and everybody knew dragons weren’t real. Why would you want to read about something that wasn’t real. He’d tossed it on to the ground by his feet. He didn’t intend to pick it back up again. He couldn’t remember very much of what it was he had read before he drifted off but he’d decided that since he had fallen asleep reading it before, it was probably boring anyway.

Joe had since philosophized that nothing inside the bus, other than him of course, was real. He posited that the sunshine coming through the window ceased to be real sunshine as soon as it touched the glass. This uncomfortable glare in his eyes and on his skin was magnified and tainted. The same with the increasingly hot, recycled air that he was breathing in and out, in and out. It was nothing like the warm summer air of his childhood. It was thick and cloying, like airy pudding stuffed in to a place it doesn’t belong (in this case, his suffering lungs.) Even the old people, with their accusing stares didn’t seem at all real. They were like scarecrows, all stuffed with nothing except spite and moody sideways glances as the young outsider. Of all the unpleasant things on the bus, he hated them the most. His teacher back home would have scalded him intensely for a long time, possibly caning his bare forearms for having such thoughts. He’d been taught that philosophy lead down the dangerous path of heretical thinking and he was beginning to agree with that standpoint.

As he was trying to force himself to stop thinking about these things, his divided attention was drawn to a piece of bad news. They’d turned off on to a much busier road. Houses were starting to rise up out of the scenery and the corn was becoming a much less frequent sight. The traffic outside gradually thickened until the bus was moving at a relative crawl to its earlier pace. It made Joe think of the winter festival back in his hometown. The way his feet trudged along the long streets of the town on festival night. How the silence and the dark was absolute other than the guttering lanterns carried by the town elders and of how everyone in the town; his parents, the butcher, the baker, the priest, his teacher, Mike and Doris, everyone, would dress up in long grey cloaks and walk in a slow silent procession to the foot of the hill. How they would gather there and as one, begin the steady and even walk in complete unison of footfall left, right, left, right, until they reached the summit in a ring all at the same time where one of the local boys, dressed all up in ceremonial garb, looking so proud and so regal, would be waiting. He’d lay down on the altar stone there and the head elder would pass the ceremonial blade in to the hands of another of the local boys as a sign that next year would be his turn to be the honoured. The bloodied. Joe had wished and wished every year that the knife would be pressed in to his hand, that he could start the year long preparation for the sacrifice by plunging the blade directly in to the heart of his predecessor and wash himself, naked, in his hot blood. This would guarantee a great harvest and the end of another winter. He would be a hero and his parents would be so proud…

Joe wondered what would wait at the end of this long, slow procession of rumbling engines. Nothing so exciting he was sure. How long had he been on this bus? Seven hours? Eight? He’d learned at school that you could travel from one end of America to the other in four hours. This meant that they couldn’t have been going in a straight line this whole time. He wondered to himself if it was all one big joke and he’d gone in a big circle only to arrive back at home. He thought that this would be wonderful.

The truth is Joe didn’t really know how far from home he could go before he’d just end up back there again. He looked to his right and a fat, old woman was scowling at the side of his face. He scowled right back. She kept scowling so he picked up his book from the floor and threw it at her head. It collided relatively quietly but quite hard with the old woman’s temple and she slumped heavily back in to her seat. She closed her eyes and stopped scowling. This suited Joe just fine. He moved seats.

The jam went on and on. He felt like he’d been sitting on the stupid bus for eternity. He’d taken to picking chunks from a loaf of bread his mother had stuffed in to his backpack, licking them and sticking them to the window to form a collage of brown clumps. He thought it was impressive that with this, frankly difficult art medium, he had managed to form a wonderful image of the glorious visage of one his town’s patron gods. Where others would only see a mess of wet chunks of bread, he saw the bulbous head and bottomless eyes of “He that lies beneath,” a mass of squid like feelers dangling over His razor-fanged maw.

Looking at the God hastily pasted to the glass with his spit made him long even more for home. He missed the routine already. He didn’t know what his new life was going to be like. If the last few hours had taught him anything, it was that he didn’t like being away from home, but he didn’t think, now that he had left, the town would take him back. It wasn’t good with outsiders and it was a fact that most of the locals viewed his leaving as a gross betrayal. Few who had left had ever returned and those that had seemed to disappear soon after. He had asked his parents about this once and been told that young boys shouldn’t ask about such things, but it was enough to say that these wanderers had displeased the Gods somehow and had to be dealt with accordingly. He knew what that meant of course. Once there was a boy in his class who had questioned the existence of “He that lies beneath.” The teacher had taken the class there and the to the cave, grabbed the boy by the waist and tossed him in to the well inside. Joe remembered the boys parents faces when they were told of this. They had looked very disappointed.

Joe didn’t want to die needlessly. He thought that if he went home, it was the most likely outcome but there was nothing else for it. He had to go home. The long empty road here had shown him that much. How could he make amends?

Joe thought and thought and thought until he came to the conclusion that there was only one thing he could do. All the people on this bus were so old though. What good would they be with their relatively short remaining years. There lives were relatively worthless to the Gods, all their potential spent already as it had been. Still, there may be somebody on the bus of some worth to “The Nameless Ones”. He pulled his ceremonial knife from its sheath and decided that sometimes you have to go for quantity over quality, stood up and, with a smile on his face went back for that scowling, unconscious old woman.


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Sonnet 3 - New Sonnet Cycle by Adam White, poet

My mind is often absent and away,
Which mean that I am prone to forget things.
Too often drawn by woes that blight my days,
I am too blind to each of my failings.
The manifests as seeming laziness,
Where all my hours look spent quite inwardly,
Which I guess is true since inside's quite a mess,
In both state of housework and me mentally.
But rarely do you struggle with my ways
So patient, you remind me of your needs
And off to fix forgotten chores I sway
To perform each of my oft neglected deeds.
This patience is a precious thing for me,
And helps me with my awful reverie.


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March - The month of the sonnet

Hey guys,
As I'm busy writing Udulo's Rise and I've decided to put a lot of focus in to that, you won't see me post on here as much this month. However, I do have a project running alongside my epic which will keep me posting. I'm writing a sonnet cycle about my wonderful and long suffering love and all the annoying quirks and foibles I have that she puts up with. As such, over the next few weeks, you'll see a lot of sonnets appearing on here. Not exclusively of course. I will be posting other kinds of poem as and when they occur to me. I hope you enjoy my March.

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Sonnet 2 - New Sonnet Cycle by Adam White, poet

My sleeplessness a problem for us both
As you turn and toss and sigh within your dreams,
I can do naught but fail to keep my oath
That sleep will win despite my silent screams.
Guiltily, I probe my heart for tumbling words,
That late at night are prone to scuttle out
And grow wide wings to sail among the birds,
That falling feathers might end my sleeping drought.
But wonders at times grace these nightly trips,
Where if I'd slept I might have sadly missed,
The hums that bring a smile to weary lips,
Or the tingles where, so dozily, you've kissed.
Such errant nights are made more sufferable
Through knowing that with you, they are more full.

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Triolet - Debt of Time by Adam White, poet

The aching crush of time goes on
And bends my knees beneath it's debt
Until my will is grated, gone.
The aching crush of time goes on,
My fleeting youth a clever con
That left me aged and pleading, yet
The aching crush of time goes on
And bends my knees beneath it's debt.



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Sonnet 1 - New Sonnet Cycle by Adam White, poet

My heart is heavy with so many thoughts,
 That love may seem the weakest thought of all.
I struggle in the web in which I'm caught,
 Yet find I am too weak to even crawl,
Or break the bonds that tie me to this mess,
 So haunted as I am by all that's passed.
I find it hard to try not to obsess,
 Over all the things that hold me to my last,
Yet kind and sweet you are to me now still,
 That weakness in your light seems quite okay.
You help refortify my flagging will
 And burn the darkness of the past away.
  This is what "you're perfect" truly means to me
  And why sweet perfection is what you'll always be.

March is my month for Sonnets. I will be writing a whole bunch of poems about the same topic. Me being a bit of a pain in the arse and my long suffering girlfriend's easygoing (and perfectly lovely) way of coping with me. Sonnets 2 and 3 are both up now if you fancy giving them a read too.

Posted for One Shot Wednesday on http://www.onestoppoetry.com

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The Dirt by Adam White, poet

Never wished it as hard as I do now,
Never wanted it as much as today.
As much as today when it dawned on me,
How well you fucked my life in every way.

My fingers grasp of their own empty will,
As if you were there for me to claw at
And reach for from the warm and clogging dirt
Where you dropped me and ever since I've sat.

The dirt. The dirt is in my every pore,
My every inch is packed with it's harsh grain.
The stink of it is complete, thick and damp,
It's clinging scent causing everyone pain.

You can see me though, down in my dank pit,
Furious, innocent in spite of this,
Where my eyes, cold fury spelled in the blue
Filled you with victory and warming bliss.

Such warmth comes from some much warmer place though,
Some much warmer place that my feet won't find.
I'll be here, in the dirt of your making,
Recovering, unfaltering and fine.

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Udulo's Rise (my epic poem) Update by Adam White, poet

Hi guys!
Thanks for all the feedback on Udulo's Rise. It's great to know you're enjoying it. This is a bit of a labour of love for me and it's good to see it appreciated. I should highlight in no uncertain terms that the link in the bar there to the first ten stanzas is really just that. The link to the first ten stanzas. I will be putting up twenty stanzas of the poem in total for you all to view, read and enjoy.

I should probably also highlight that Udulo's Rise is around 120 stanzas long and is only the first of four poems about the titular character. The others are titled as follows

Udulo's Rage
Udulo's Redemption
Udulo's Reach

The four parts in total will run to around 500 stanzas (which I'm sure you'll agree is a good length for an epic poem.)

I'll also be doing some watercolour painting as I go along to add to the body of work, which I'll post on here at some point I'm sure.
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Little Black Stone

Smooth surface. cold, hard skin.
You're my little black stone
In a little red tin.
My only lasting friend.
How long since I touched you,
How long since I said
How dearly I love you.
How long since I polished
And made you look new.
You patiently waiting,
Sitting perfectly still
In a little red tin.

The beach where I found you
Was filled with your brothers,
But none could subdue
My pain the way you could,
With your welcome hardness,
And conspicuous good.
I'd sat there in pieces,
My hands raked through pebbles,
My face was a mess,
Your shine caught my eye then,
So I place you so gently
In a little red tin.

Your mine now forever.
Nothing can take you,
No force will deter,
My unflinching passion
For your obsidian surface,
And ashen reserve.
My little black stone,
You repaired all the damage
When she left me alone.
How lonely I've been.
I'll keep you close to me,
In a little red tin.

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The World of Adam White, that poet guy that we've all (not) been hearing about #1

Fell behind the last couple of days. Was finishing off my immigration documentation so had to focus all my efforts on that. Will still probably get sent back to me though. Ha, that's bureaucracy for you!

Hope you've all had a good weekend and things are ticking over nicely for you. It's been a while since I wrote anything on here that wasn't a poem and since it's the start of March now, I thought I'd kick off the month with a bit of a blab.

Here are the things that are going on with me. I moved to Canada from my native England on the 20th January 2011. I am still not quite settled in. This is no bad thing. The reason I can't get my head around the move is because everything is so different here. Everything is cleaner, the people are nicer, the air is much colder and there has been persistent snow on the ground since I arrived. If you know me, you know I am a fan of the cold so this is no kind of problem.

Despite this system shock, I am being quite productive now. I've taken up watercolour painting, I've been writing my epic poem (the watercolours will go with it if I get good enough at doing them), planning out the novel I'm writing, attending a poetry and writing group, spending time with my long suffering girlfriend Tara and generally making a nuisance of myself. It's nice to have so much time to be creative but I would quite like to get back in to work, even if it is only a part time job. I can't do anything like that right now because I have to wait on the documentation that will give me the right to earn a living here.

That's actually about all that is going on. I miss my friends and family in England but I know for sure that I've done the right thing in moving. I'd recommend anyone who is in England get out of that god and man forsaken place. If you already left or have never been there, well done!

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