Quotes about grimy, page 6
A(nother) Night Without You
A) fragmented life story
interiority, if you will (i called this one 'alone')
your eyes provoke the night’s conscious panting,
a tangible thickness that collects ceaselessly on all four sides of a dimly lit room
and dries
your mouth, the canvas lampshade in the corner
that licks its lips and closes,
gathering each lonely fragment of the pale gold
into a haze that screams silently through the window
and dies
B) cause maybe I like it this way,
(this one 'a short story written in neon')
your love the bloody bird’s head in the middle
of the sidewalk
and mine the pristine corpse found in the street,
C) yourself,
('the rain in chicago' or 'awakening from a dream')
the overlooked blood in the streets
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poem by Matt Denis
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The House-Top
No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air
And blinds the brain-a dense oppression, such
As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,
Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.
Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads
Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.
Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf
Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot.
Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought,
Balefully glares red Arson-there-and there.
The town is taken by its rats-ship-rats
And rats of the wharves. All civil charms
And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe-
Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway
Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve
And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.
Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead,
And ponderous drag that jars the wall.
Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll
Of black artillery; he comes, though late;
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poem by Herman Melville
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Lost Kitten
Two men I saw reel from a bar
And stumble down the street;
Coarse and uncouth as workmen are,
They walked with wobbly feet.
I watched them, thinking sadly as
I heard their hobnails clink,
The only joy a toiler has
Is to get drowned in drink.
A kitten on a wall,
A skinny, starving stray;
It looked so pitifully small,
A fluff of silver grey.
One of the men came to a stand,
A kindly chap was he,
For with a huge and horny hand
He stroked it tenderly.
With wistful hope it gazed at him
And arched a spine of fur;
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poem by Robert William Service
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May Miracle
On this festive first of May,
Wending wistfully my way
Three sad sights I saw today.
The first was such a lovely lad
He lit with grace the sordid street;
Yet in a monk's robe he was clad,
With tonsured head and sandalled feet.
Though handsome as a movie star
His eyes had holiness in them,
As if he saw afaint, afar
A stable-stall in Bethlehem.
The second was a crippled maid
Who gazed and gazed with eager glance
Into a window that displayed
The picture of a ballet dance.
And as she leaned on crutches twain,
Before that poster garland-gay
She looked so longingly and vain
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poem by Robert William Service
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Old Town Types No. 7
Well I remember him - Big Jack Herrington;
Big Jack, the lumper, tanned and honest-eyed,
The clean, straight limbs of him,
The strength in those limbs of him
Strength that was the end of him, and once had been his pride:
Big Jack Herrington, toiling up the stack,
Hefting up the wheat sacks on his mighty back.
One year, two years he labored when the wheat came;
Three years, four years, in the grimy heat,
Toiling up the planks there
The crazy, narrow planks there.
Folk said, 'A wonder! Why, there's nothing got him beat!'
Never had he faltered beneath a heavy bag
Big, Jack, the lumper, never known to sag.
For five years, for big pay he larbored there.
'Ten bob a day!' they said. 'Jack's the boy to score.'
And then came the end of him
A false step, and the end of him;
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poem by Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Out Of Siberia
SHAKERAGS, cripples, gaunt and dazed,
Prison-broken hosts on hosts,
Torture-scarred and dungeon-crazed,
Down the convict road they pour,
More and more and myriads more,
Terrible as ghosts.
Shuffling feet that miss the chain,
Shoulders welted, faces hoar,
Sightless eyes that stare in vain,
Writhen limbs and idiot tongue—
They are old who were so young
When they passed before.
Grimy from the mines, a stain
And a horror on the white
Sweep of the Siberian plain,
These, grotesque and piteous, these
Fill the earth with jubilees,
Flood the skies with light.
While each squalid tatter spins
At the sport of wind and snow,
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poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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London Seagulls
The pigeons of the Abbey, the pigeons of Saint Paul's,
That woo in windy niches of grey and grimy walls,
The pearl-grey dawns of London, his sky that gleams and glooms,
His stately smoky sunsets are in their changing plumes.
The saucy London sparrows, their Cockney chatter tells
Their parents nested surely in earshot of Bow Bells . . .
But Oh! the London seagulls a-cruising up and down,
They're most like old-time seamen come back to London town.
Old salty swearing seadogs and tarry buccaneers,
With bacca quids and pigtails and ear-rings in their ears,
That spent their money handsome and took their ease ashore
In rowdy Ratcliff aleshops with sand upon the floor . . .
And bawled their old sea-ballads, and told their thumping lies,
In fearsome deep sea lingo to open landsmen's eyes,
And drained their brimming pewters, and spat into the tide,
In old shipboarded taverns by Wapping waterside . . .
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poem by Cicely Fox Smith
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A Hasty Inference
The Devil one day, coming up from the Pit,
All grimy with perspiration,
Applied to St. Peter and begged he'd admit
Him a moment for consultation.
The Saint showed him in where the Master reclined
On the throne where petitioners sought him;
Both bowed, and the Evil One opened his mind
Concerning the business that brought him:
'For ten million years I've been kept in a stew
Because you have thought me immoral;
And though I have had my opinion of you,
You've had the best end of the quarrel.
'But now-well, I venture to hope that the past
With its misunderstandings we'll smother;
And you, sir, and I, sir, be throned here at last
As equals, the one to the other.'
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poem by Ambrose Bierce
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Where Home Was
'TWAS yesterday; 'twas long ago:
And for this flaunting grimy street,
And for this crowding to and fro,
And thud and roar of wheels and feet,
Were elm-trees and the linnet's trill,
The little gurgles of the rill,
And breath of meadow-flowers that blow
Ere roses make the summer sweet.
'Twas long ago; 'twas yesterday:
Our peach would just be new with leaves,
The swallow pair that used to lay
Their glimmering eggs beneath our eaves
Would flutter busy with their brood,
And, haply, in our hazel-wood,
Small village urchins hide at play,
And girls sit binding blue-bell sheaves.
Was the house here, or there, or there?
No landmark tells. All changed; all lost;
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poem by Augusta Davies Webster
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Window Shopper
I stood before a candy shop
Which with a Christmas radiance shone;
I saw my parents pass and stop
To grin at me and then go on.
The sweets were heaped in gleamy rows;
On each I feasted - what a game!
Against the glass with flatted nose,
Gulping my spittle as it came;
So still I stood, and stared and dreamed,
Savouring sweetness with my eyes,
Devouring dainties till it seemed
My candy shop was paradise.
I had, I think, but five years old,
And though three-score and ten have passed,
I still recall the craintive cold,
The grimy street, the gritty blast;
And how I stared into that shop,
Its gifts so near and yet so far,
Of marzipan and toffee drop,
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poem by Robert William Service
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