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Best Poems Written by Dick Tugwell

Below are the all-time best Dick Tugwell poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Apparent Sincerity of Unchained Men

Misspent by inclination,
treed by ambition,
I fled the woods thirsting for the desert,
only to drown in a deep water ecstasy,
later to awaken in the vineyard,
free of fright, bound by the new day's light.

The unchained man bowed his head,
sincerity apparent, no deception transparent.
But the rock in my heart would not soften.
My suspicion would stay, no fears allayed.
This unblinkered seer,
this transcendental man,
had clean fingernails.
 
Draw your lines, number your principles,
look through me and ponder the stars.
Perhaps you do read future history.
In a world scrubbed white that coin may trade,
but you get no supper until I get paid.
 
The strange attractor left the table.
He blasted through the clover
and felled the shamrocks,
separating forever the last leprechauns in love.
Brutally, he balanced the books.
 
Now I see the unchained man's dream:
A land unfettered by growing things,
that sterile paradise where simplicity is king.
The numbers add up easily in a desert fantasy.
Convulsed with joy,
I close my eyes adrift at sea.

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[Note: You will see in the work below connections to other poems I have posted here. Those poems are tangents to this poem that more completely tell the tale of rise, pride, hubris, fall, and reckoning. -- DT]

Wire me up!
Run that current through my head!
Suck the marrow from my bones!
I’m swimming with the mermaids now,
strapped to this merciful bed.

I walked among the dinosaurs, noble cursed beasts.
I crawled out of Armageddon's hole,
and from the rim I spied,
far across the land scoured by the rivers of time,
the light breaking bright, the new dawn
of the land I was made to belong.

Atop the last icecap I took my measure
of the distance to the new dawn treasure.
Ol' Sol indolent, I was betwixt the gloam and the glare,
that old lamp content to spill
only the slimmest of glimmer
to show me the way.

"Monkey man, what is your plan?"
winked the one-eyed cat,
grinning a-tooth, predator of dusk and dawn.
"To go to where I am called, to that land meant for me."
"Don't lose your way, fun it may be",
dissolving into the dark, the tiger whispered.

Starlit I took a confident stride; I could do that now.
My pace became a chase, more and more aglow,
as I sped along to the quickening gleam of the new dawn.
Thunderstruck, I exploded into the truth:
I lit the way. I was the Dawn!

I was blind. Now I see.
Look at what they built.
Look at what they built for me!
as I marched under a noon sun,
now humbled to pave for me
the glistening path into the heart of my new city,
with sweet asphalt aglimmer.
Now I see my triumph so clearly.

I climbed no mountain.
I swam no sea.
The mountain fell and the sea ebbed.
I towered before them and they fled,
along with mermaids now in dread.

This was no rain forest fantasy.
It was a sun-scoured desert of hard-lit truth.
My desires gelled into thoughts,
my thoughts muscled into words.
Words to be heard!
The only words that will be heard
in my desert oasis shorn of all
but justice pristine.

At the far edge of my realm the tiger appeared.
He laughed and he sneered, the desert seared.
The truth was hard-lit.
I was blind. Now I see.
My kingdom fell to the next savior's Hell:
"Your words are caged, safe on no stage.
"You crawled to speak them; now crawl to eat them!
"Only then can we begin and make you a True Man again."

My heart defeated, but unhumbled, could not bear his love.
So now I drown in the sea of compassion spilt
from Leviathan's crucifiers of man.
Evil, black, and vile …
I’m nothing more than love’s wretched excess.
But loved I am nonetheless.

Floundering in this sea of brotherly love,
the mermaids dare not rescue me.
Rancid, rank, and reeking … they know me all too well.
A little greased lightning through the temples.
Teeth a-chattering, eyes a-rolling.
Traitor, lawyer, molester,
God bless them all.

I'm gonna have a hell of a headache
and a few chipped teeth … oh well.
The perfect mate for a long-toothed gal.
I'm cured, it's true.
So now it's time to say good-bye.
The mermaids have called.
Time to find my way home.

But where is home, my journey's end?
I rose only to fall to another
who also rose and too will fall.
Stardust I was and a man I became,
only to be dust again,
dust in the dirt never to rise again.
Surely there must be more to me.

So I struggle, struggle to stand!
I have pride. I am rock. I will stand.
The mermaids circle me, pulling at my knees.
"Bend!" they cry. But I defy. I am rock!
And I drown in a deep water ecstasy.

I was blind. Now I see.
Pride has always been the end of me,
damming love's flow into a heart unhumbled,
blinkering my eyes from the shimmer of grace,
the shine of the true dawn
of the land I was made to belong.

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The Last Lover of Heroes

Squalid were those days of thuggish delight
When the fat land's spirit the small Goths stole.
Joy was a thirst slaked, forever a night,
In that corpulent desert of mean soul.
 
But pastel virtue slowly starves a man
To walking death lest spurred by hunger's throes.
Standing apart I shunned the dead hearts' Pan
And found you, the last lover of heroes.
 
Of fleshy spirit living colors bold
You nourished me on the ripe joys to come
When truth and beauty are wrenched from lust's scold
And repatriated to love's kingdom.
 
Now together gray at time's ragged edge
With your love to the morrow I still pledge.

Details | Dick Tugwell Poem

Pigs Won'T Fly

PIGS WON'T FLY
 
Yes, the little ones wonder,
but, like you, their thoughts are so small.
Go ahead, run away,
but you can't lie about the sky.
It doesn't fall, and pigs won't fly.
 
Resurrection, ascension, assumption.
Spare me your consumption.
Do not feed me any more corruption.
I'd rather not love at all
than to love so small.
 
Long ago secure,
deep in the corn,
I fled the warmth 
in search of scorn.
 
Down the long street I escaped from home.
Liberated from potential,
freed from expectation,
I found my near rescue where the long street ends,
the one place where the sky does fall
and the mermaids never swim.
 
The beauty of a life mocked
by the bold and the proud curdled into a crowd.
Better dead than unexpressed,
even if hushed, pretty, and tressed
in a corn-yellow sundress.
 
Fallen I stand.
Crawling away from the long street
from under a heavy sky,
I am electrified and rectified.
Freed of the lessons of the damned,
taught by the selfless well-wishers of man,
no longer searching like you
for the pig who flies.

Details | Dick Tugwell Poem

Starving the Monster

Starving the monster in the hole,
anger is hot, spite is cold.
The walls are bare and they're thin.
They won't stop the outside coming in.
 
Rabbits can speculate.
Turtles must hedge.
Move quick, never guess, trust no one.
Cross the finish line alone.
 
Straining to hear the world about,
day by day to fill the hole.
But across the pasture green,
somewhere past the sunset sheen,
no one saw the rabbit slip,
falling into the once sunny abyss.
 
The windows are open, despite the cold.
The outside's in,
pouring into the deepening hole.
The turtle will win.
 
The rabbit is gone.
Turtles and monsters, they’re not the same.
So, blame me not if I was too cold
or, perhaps, too slow to fill the hole.

Best Poems Written by Dick Tugwell

The Martian On Grape Lane

Vulcan's Mercy

Molarity

Crooked Tooth Joy

Kissing the Sun

The Apparent Sincerity of Unchained Men

Swimming Against the Current

The Last Lover of Heroes

Pigs Won'T Fly

Starving the Monster