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 Aug 2017 Sid Lollan
Iz
Today I pondered Oblivion. If the stars will collapse on themselves, if the nothingness between the asteroids and the dust lining the moons and the inhuman complexity that is Time will all convolute and dissolve into existential chaos, then what is the point? If space time does not have an infinitely stretching edge like an anti gravitational sea eclipsing the earth, then neither does humanity. So Europe and America and Africa are tiny islands in an everlasting ocean; single ants in an interminable universe. So my home is even more exponentially tiny: my state is a mere indention in an all-embracing dirt path so I am a receding footprint in a fossil of human existance. My poems are specks of dust on a planet of amorphous matter.
... a lamentable natural disaster ―
no one really ever understood
the uncomfortable loneliness they read,
left unsaid,  in the silence between the lines

Gathered words often revealed
an awkward vulnerability
a life tethering by a frayed thread
unable to shed the skin that enfolds
the dauntingly misunderstood laments

Suspended at friendless crossroads
melancholy days of malignant indifference
stifle the whispered thoughts,
"accepting an unfinished life"
evanescent as the faltering light,
musing many a sleepless night

It’s as if there was always some wordless reason
to never feel "good enough" to just be,
unworthy to discover elusive love,
cleave a labyrinth out of the darkness,
okay to just let go

It’s not a weakness to be human
"Tears are the heart’s traces" … he once wrote
"only eyes cleansed by teardrops see clearly"
heaven's rain unconditionally enlightened
by love and light.

Someone said a poet died
trying to make sense
out of all he thought he'd given
a word at a time was left behind
only abandoned words remain
                             orphaned in the drowning silence


                                      harlon rivers ©
JULY, 2017 : for every beginning there is an end...proverb
I backpedal before flanks of flames,
auburn and angry, devouring the
fractured field; deconstructing
                     the turn of the century.

The fire jumps up and down,
like a developing polaroid,
asking to be acknowledged
-- to which I can relate, but
I'd like to believe I cause
                  less destruction.

Closing my eyes, I become
submerged in memory of the
hideous boulevard she drove
down, to the tune of disposable
pop singers; crouching next to
the radio, praying with the servants
of postured finer joys like pirate
rubies and sweet kale salads.

When looking up, through the
windshield; through the life;
a tic scampers from eyelid to
cheek, as the car buckles before
a triumph of a deer; the size of
a Godly Eland, shoveling it's
human feet into the downtown
dirt: an asphalt so slick, we
rose from our seats, as the
God split our vehicle in half,
throwing us into opposite
guardrails; dodging cars,
while it watched us.

Shudders of savored gladness
drip down my hairline wound,
painting my face before I die
and return to the towering blaze.
On Reading Yet Another Essay on the Death of Reading

Yet another essay beginning with “I”
Sophomore thesis: no one reads anymore
The power of books, the great ideas
The shared experience, the care of souls

The temptations of social media
(Really? No one ever said that before)
Escape, new points of view, humanity
Foundations of faith (but never the roofs)

If reading is dead -

If reading is dead, then who reads those essays,
Those many essays on the death of reading?
Ouroboros

Writhing about in man’s mythologies
Is a completeness, itself to affirm
Scriven in the ancient cosmologies:
The self-ordained perfection of The Worm

The Samsara of the self-seeking soul
And a self-admiring self-causation
Itself entire, a universal whole
Devouring its tail in auto-phagation

But metamorphoses have come to pass:
The endless worm’s head is now up its own (self)
W. K. Kortas alluded to self-obsession as having one’s head up one’s own (euphemism), and a friend mentioned the Ouroboros, which appears in several cultural traditions, so here is your ‘umble scrivener’s variant.
Uncle Vanya and Lady Godiva

Uncle Vanya came strolling down the road
Wishing he had made something of his life
His young friend Anne loquaciously agreed
And with remarkable vehemence urged him

     to endeavour to remediate his perceived inadequacies in the    
     many precedent matters that burdened him…

Don Quixote suggested that worries were giants
Cassandra said, “There is only one page left”
Nick Adams whispered, “Shh! You’ll scare the fish!”
Ambrose Silk asked the way to the world’s end

And young Lady Godiva, sans chemise
Outsourced her image on souvenir tees
 Aug 2017 Sid Lollan
Nat Lipstadt
August 20th, 2011

Pink and white hothouse lilies
parfume the atmosphere
of our summer retreat,
the shelter upon our island redoubt.

Their scent, a scentry,
posted to guard against
the oranges and reds,
the piano notes of fall,
the ivory whites of winter,
the iconic colors of the
seasons of responsibilities.

Lock the doors.

Preserves of
oranges, peach and lemon,
summer fruits,
preserve my calm!

Mingle well
with the other summer's fruited sweets,
cherries, black berries, caramel,
all, ally thyself with salt air
and do thy fragrant work!

Ferry away, banish,
the wardens of the
workweek jail, like only
summer garden colors
and sun-rays can.    

Still yourself,
be calmed, becalmed,
there is no breeze,
tis but mid-August
and the grill still awaits
your further command.

Long days and humid nights
bid you drink red rosés,
and summer lemoncellos,
chilled to accompany
the sweet summer corn
covered in salty butter.
drink the jus of the
summer sea's bounty,
saltwater berries, seasonal delights.

But you know better.

Stepping outside,
you are tree felled,
senses red alerted
by hints, whiffs
of the odor of change,
a piano refrain.

Acorns in August?

Can't be, won't allow it,
that slight chill, dispatch it,
won't let go yet of
sun tanned lotion notions,  
and legalized
summer laziness.  

Beneath my flip~flops,
acorn shells irritatingly crunch,
uninvited guests,
they are the peas I feel
under the mattress and bed,
contaminating my head,
while I lay  cloaked beneath,
my summer weight comforter.

Too late.

Back to school flyers
litter the driveway and infest
the Sunday papers.
I am defeated,
my senses tingle,
at the sight of these
changeover secretions.  

Sap of the maples is acoming,
the Paul Revere warning
of Redcoated leaves soon to
invade my bay's sandy shores.

Come my friends,
be courageous
and of good faith.

One more time, unto the breach!
One more time, unto the beach!

Tho our armor of golden tan
will of necessity rust red by cold bitters,
the summer of our poetry,
recorded, will forever live.

Even tho summer's demise
draws near, its death most glorious and not in vain,
when we lay spent and slain
after our approaching defeat,
apres the Battle of
Labor Day,
We still have our body,
Our poems, summer crafted,
The cello and the piano
Reminding those few left to listen.
<•>
mid august suicidal
August 12, 2017

to the facts:
suicidal thoughts come as regular as a
teenager pimple

weekends summer sun burns the skin,
the inner gloom,
so that I just make from the
Monday to Friday bookends
of grey cloud doom, barely opened eyes

the acorns peas under the bed's mattress,
my summer-brain pod irritants
are
freshly arrived, fully ensconced,
antibiotic resistant sob's,  
the colored newsprint of hateful
back to school flyers still haunt and clog
the sinking sunking sinking
waste disposal

the newest indignity,
the emails proclaiming
end-of-summer better hurry
drink up those three cases of pink rose wine
down in the chilling basement

not a bad idea in *** actuality

nothing kills like suicide and
nothing kills suicidal thoughts
like a three week drunk
starting now

the truth burden just got harder;
Adagio for Strings, Opus 11,
whispers stay thy hand


~~~
 Aug 2017 Sid Lollan
saranade
My freedom of expression,
Or, freedom to exist...
I've had to suppress, any implication,
That I was free, IT was free,
Or that I could rest.
My obligations became innovations,
My "freedom" was a serious test.

Shut my mouth.
Silence my thought.
Burn holes in my own sky...
To survive,
Just to... Get by.

There's no blood on the hand
of the devil begging for a gun...
But, the blood of my son,
My thoughts, my thighs,
My sun, my sky...
I'm paralyzed.
I idealized and fantasised
...a metaphor...
Something in-between dead and alive.

But this is literal.

Cry freedom for a body that fails.
An existing breath that bent steel.
Locked in the prison with 10 wardens.
Slave to a super power.
And I'm furious you sent me a bill.
I ate your currency.
I'm... Fed... Up.

Your devil is free to stare,
poke fun and share
...the misery...
...my suffering...
I'm paralyzed.

This is literal.
So many applications
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