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Joseph Paris Aug 2015
Shake out your shining tresses, Love
Undress their dark contour as the pink stars rise
And drowse around the smoke-ringed moon,
Like roses in a whiskey glass.
Take time to dream a dream, my Love,
Tresses fallen across the curve of your face --
Sleep away the late summer moon,
Spooning the stars asleep in pink lace.

Lay down your weary bones, my dear,
Stretch out on vanilla feather-winged dreams 
My whisky rose petal kisses blown into the night
Finding you on glittered opalescent moonbeams
Grab hold of pink-starred sweet slumber
As  silken tendrils puddle upon your chest
Tangled up in each other's lithe limbs
Our blissful hearts beat together in tender rest
Joseph Paris Jul 2015
We should legit organize our own Celebrity Softball Game.
Play another Poetry Site
Or Intramural.
Show America a different side
of stardom.
Rent a sandlot.
Wolf starting pitcher,
Soul starting catcher.
Eliot umpires.
Everyone gets an At bat.
Instead of hating on each other,
Play together as a Team.
#why not
#seriously haters
3.1k · Oct 2015
Part of Me, Part of You
Joseph Paris Oct 2015
-- we get woven into each other's life sometimes without realizing it

I  felt it when the sun came up this morning
I knew that I could not wait another day
There is something I must tell you
A voice is calling to me

Until we find the bridge across forever
Until this grand illusion brings us home
You and I will always be together
From this day on you'll never walk alone

You're a part of me, I'm a part of you
Wherever we may travel
Whatever we may go through
Whatever time and space may take away
It cannot change the way I feel today
So hold me close and say you feel it too
You're a part of me and I'm a part of you


You're a part of me, I'm a part of you

Lyrics by Glenn Frey, English Dan
song played at the end of Thelma and Louise
2.0k · Jan 2015
he kisses her
Joseph Paris Jan 2015
He kisses her when she's fully clothed then sends her on her way He tells her that he loves her
when she's miles away
1.8k · May 2015
Desire
Joseph Paris May 2015
Each realized desire only grows a new desire.
Fulfillment can never make you happy because desire is endless and fulfillment is limited.
There will always be the next want or desire making you unhappy.
Therefore, the wisdom of poets who transform desire into beauty.
Joseph Paris Feb 2013
Past the deep Gotham of my eyes --
     The authority of my headache reads
     The graffiti of the prophets -- scribbled
     On the back walls of the train-station:
          
           Commute, work, commute, eat,
           Commute, work, commute, sleep;
           Work  Buy  Die
           And Say AYE-AYE, Sir.

     How many Dear Mr. Heartbreak letters
     Have been etched here -- (I cannot say how many) --
     Deep in the Gotham of my eyes --
     Cold as a city empty of alleys --

     Maybe I'll please the philistines,
     With much talk of good money. I'll study
     Their scriptures about the nonsense of art.
     At last I'll make good --

     I'll finally make them happy.
     I'll try a new part in my hair.
     Maybe I'll put down this pen; stop these letters.
     From now on, I'll express myself in tears.
1.7k · Jul 2015
Fourth of July Poem
Joseph Paris Jul 2015
This July, the thought and creativity that I would have given to a Fourth of July poem were reserved to help save a kitty's life. A frequent front-porch visitor, Princess knew nothing of "amber waves of grain," "purple mountain's majesty," and "rocket's red glare." Rockets shot high above her five-word world, that had little to do with patriot's dreams and everything to do with the promise of tomorrow. Right now, I am the only man in the world who cares about this cat's existence. The truth is I am just as stricken, and we lie side by side equally dying.
Joseph Paris Aug 2015
Like stars spilling from whiskey dewdrop lips 
Words streak across a midnight sky of longing

What proverbs may come from these whiskey lips For every lightless night spent apart For every unspent voucher to destinations we will never travel to
Find something beautiful
And don't let go
All things of beauty
Must pass away
Maybe one beautiful thing can stay

Hold tight the breathless moments spent dreaming in aurora skies
For every darkness carries the remembrance of the sun
How it left warm kisses upon fluttering eyelids 
In this way we too will find heaven

That undiscovered heaven whose patterns we have run through
and dimly remembered sun
the hopeless light that sits quietly
In the souls of the storm-born
That far
that distant
That's where the hurt is
That is the proof of love
Joseph Paris Oct 2015
I put a sardine in a mud puddle,              
My Grandma must not be told.
I would have fed it to my dog,
But it was too salty and so cold.

I would have ate it with my eyes closed
If it wasn’t so slimy and gray.
Grandma doesn’t know it’s been floating
In a mud puddle half the day.

The sardine may come to life and swim,
Or some boys will use it for bait --
If Grandma ever finds it,
Her white hairs will stand straight.

The secret of the sardine is safe so far --
Where I left it I’ll never admit.
It can stay forever in its muddy home,
With a butterfly attending to it.
Tryingsomethingdifferent
1.4k · Sep 2015
Unsonnet
Joseph Paris Sep 2015
The moon is missing
Old stories oppress the scorned clock's hand
What is this interminable waiting?
Lost are the World's metaphors
Lost and fled to a dark place
Once beehives born in new orchards
They now dissolve in time's dead way
And die in the viciousness of niceness
Densely social and devoid of empty
Do I dare ask these forbidden questions
She is missing, missing to me
I know where she is but I can't find her
  but now I see the harvest corn
  and a bursting city of goldenrod
            
  (this can only mean good)
Joseph Paris Sep 2015
In the brief day, or rather, the night
called Life,
dream how easily a speck may be distanced from itself;
and how hard also it is
to remove that same grain
from your proud eye.
Look at the lightning over the green corn
and learn the virile meaning of our lack of power
under the traveling stars.
Turn on the lights silver-electric
to see in what dark rooms you have dwelt,
yet tried to be happy.
Open and close your eyes
and feel the weird proximity of doll-like death.
Talk to the moth
and trot the eternal wheel of boredom,
tolerated by a life that cannot wait
to immolate itself on a fuel lighter
for love of the gamble.
Come near the heartbeat of an animal
and touch your own heart
to take the pulse of the planets
and experience the split-second hypocrisy of love.
Unwrinkle your bones with deep calm
and purest feeling, unfurling your reddish hair,
and you will bare your heart in all your poems.
Pity the mania of poetry
and the helplessness of its wisdom
to hope or heal or even to dare
to come down from its own shiny cross.
In spite of all,
extinguish any light at its source
and you will work in vain
to prevent its survival
in some remembering soul.
1.3k · Dec 2015
A Queen in Her Own Right
Joseph Paris Dec 2015
Every one is the superstar of his own reality, the hero of his own story.
Many men emerge as kings in some realm and declare according to their own understanding.
Women have been called Queens for ages.
The problem is that the Kingdoms most men can give them are not worth ruling.
Joseph Paris Dec 2015
Some place where fame

holds no sway

Some world where violets

never fade

Somewhere someday...

Lies a dream reborn within a dream


Dreams overturn reality

When your thoughts flare with the stars

It's impossible to be an artist

With your feet on solid earth


In all the antiquity of art

we live in a time that barely notices

that while our ideas may levitate

the course world keeps our feet pinned down


We can try and float above the expectations

But the tyrant label will tie us to the earth

Shamed with the name of “struggling artist”

Which you don’t rise above



Instead you sit

With a copper coin cup at your feet

Selling your soul daily

In the torments of time


When I look into the deep eyes of art

I see this lack and struggle and longing

and I am thrown back into despair,

into the starved storms of any fading morning


The best we can do

Is turn the despair

Into something worth admiring

Take the past

And display it

On our present-day canvases


The world is stacked against the very idea

of taking creativity seriously,

except as a hobby,

yet we try anyway

although we know this from the start,

because the alternative,

Conformity,

does not satisfy our restless minds  


I clench my fists in the corner of the room

As the eyes stay fixed to silicon screens

Everything turns a hazy shade of blue

As social media fills the air


All I want to do is write a poem

One filled with imagery that contains no character limit

About how the eyes of the lonely

Stay glued to phones

Dominating our reality


But is the scene truly filled?

Or is it a vast emptiness?

How real is real?

That tells me that we, the sensitive different types, need one another

Or they will surely clone us

In their own image


So I encourage you

Breathe poetry

Cry paint

Do not let the world turn you monotonous

for the second we lose

Those colorful tears

And those darkly beautiful words

We lose something more than a hobby

We lose a life worth living


Or else it's a black and white reality at best

Although some see style in the monochromatic

I prefer colors and light

Enough to see

It's a black and white world without you,

It's a black and white world without you


Sarah Kersey
Joseph Paris
1.3k · Mar 2015
And Now I Know
Joseph Paris Mar 2015
Of all the random movement
In the world
It seems no one has time
To notice your struggles
Anymore than one is saddened
By a broken sidewalk
Or demolished daisy
And now I know
How far from here
I have to go
The thought of you
Causes me to tremble
Put in simplest terms -
So much for fine words
No one can live up to them
Let me wake from this
Dream of life
And fly finally past the darkness
That reaches out for the darkness
Joseph Paris Nov 2015
There is no hope in small no-name towns.
I've lost my loves in small no-claim towns.
'Round the church bend, the lambs on the hill,
I am reminded that I love her still.

Dead in every warm shade of brown,
First by your side in the deadly small town.
'Round the church bend, the lambs on the hill,
I left my heart by the old steel mill.

Nothing can last in the small no-name town,
I built a past in our small no-claim town.
'Round the church bend, the lambs on the hill,
I can't forget that I love her still.
**You can substitute 'him' for 'her'.
I'm sure we are many who know this experience.
1.3k · Nov 2015
Dedication
Joseph Paris Nov 2015
I want to dedicate myself
to coming up with a phrase
that will be repeated and remembered
for all time
Something like
still water runs deep
or
look before you leap
or even
Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
Four or five simple words
How hard can that be, right?  Ha
Right
Joseph Paris Dec 2015
So it's us against ourselves.
The mind is the adversary.
And what is that?
A mere dream within a dream.
What does forever mean?
Some hazy lines...
A blur of self,
A little talk,
Between you and me?

A heart lost in translation is in me, while forever is to be free of wonder.
Humans hungry for home and hopeful for hunger.
Life is one long plunder
For the lost ones of
Silent thunder.

Are these lost ones so lost?
Or will these sons of thunder
Flash like lightning?
How far do you have to go
Before no one understands at all?

As far as the fog found clouding the light that sits quiet in the souls of the stormborn.
The light that breaks the beaten barriers of sound and gives life to the lifeless.

That distant light called Hope by some;
A hope that may only protract disharmony.
A skillful prolongation
To the battered.
It is said that hurt is proof of love,
But what's left to prove
When the uncalmed storm
Engulfs us?

By light I live, but by love I die.
Pray to every god that we are left in the eye.
The only proof we need is meaning, something bold to live by.
But we crave happiness, and there can only be one,
So what could anyone do but try and cry?



First of many, I'll have Joseph title it since I don't feel like I have a place in doing so...

My words are italicized
#love   #life   #question   #storm   #existence   #meaning   #paris   #collaboration   #joseph
1.1k · Jan 2015
Thought
Joseph Paris Jan 2015
As pained as we may be physically there is no greater hurt than a poet living in a poemless age
Joseph Paris Dec 2015
Muse of a new day, how is it that you are the way you are? -- feeling so much,
so that you may wish not ever to feel, as if you were not the one chosen,
still dressed in a cloak of a million lights.

But I claim that is what makes you brilliant, though feeling does not save.

You can travel all the way to Mars,
digging up the waters of your sub-consciousness to serve as your thoughts.
Please, don't plead to the skies and lead your life astray,
looking at constellations too long might make you want to stay among the grey.

You and I, we’re not so different.

Too long have I lingered in studies of the stars
and missed the comrade human hours.
Sad as the monotone of the sea, I tossed away the stone of my powers.
And now, as I weightlessly wing amongst the churches of my nameless city, I see it all so clearly:

The monotony voices the unspoken plea,
of a life better lived than pondered,
better felt than conquered.
1.0k · Jun 2015
Note to Self and Public
Joseph Paris Jun 2015
I recently saw something I wrote published in Poets online under the name Pamela Hope. Does anyone know anything about this person, or did I mistakenly write a famous older expression into my work? I don't recall that, and this is why I am reluctant to post any of my better efforts anywhere but in a published book.
#noted, there is nothing new under the sun
850 · Sep 2014
New Poem
Joseph Paris Sep 2014
Thoughts spin softly toward the unsayable Impossible to resist like the city's dark glamour or a wicked woman's kiss
Each turn of her face an eclipse giving birth
Each cigarette a torch held high
Only to have died all gorgeous and sad
As the city and abyss stare each other down
840 · Jan 2015
Famous Phrase
Joseph Paris Jan 2015
Shakespeare: "doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun moves, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt that I love you"
#weallneedinspiration
Joseph Paris Nov 2014
Dreams Cannot Live In the Bright of Day
Dreams cannot live in the bright of day.     What the world calls hope is nightbound,     And reaps the whirlwind.     Fast speeds the night;     Fast comes the day.     Fortunes in feeling are squandered in broad daylight.     Moon-tossed dreams of Kate navigate the night.     Though thoughts of you never die,     Fast flies the day;     Fast dies the night.
810 · Jul 2014
It Breaks My Heart
Joseph Paris Jul 2014
It breaks my heart when you drive away
774 · Dec 2014
thought
Joseph Paris Dec 2014
It is time for poetry to be recognized as a divine gift and the poet as the messenger of Divinity.
736 · Oct 2015
Red Sky
Joseph Paris Oct 2015
The secrets of the  universe can wait --
The moon in the window is material.
There can be no persuading the Muses to explain …
To an oyster -- its pearl is a masterpiece.


A butterfly may alight on you --
Whispering secrets of forbidden knowledge
As strange to you as the deserts of the moon --
Forget this -- it is enough to save a child's blink.
673 · Jul 2014
Say Farewell Muse
Joseph Paris Jul 2014
-  no more let life divide what death can join together                                        


Say farewell Muse measured in seasons of love
O’ gone goddess gifting us unbelief…
Why does heaven have to be so far away?
And such shades of blue that leave no hope of peace?

****** well beyond these last days of mine
Forgotten by my muses and condemned to die
Definition to a spider’s eye
is chaos to a fly
512 · Sep 2014
A Thought
Joseph Paris Sep 2014
There's a lot that a bird doesn't know, but that doesn't change the fact that the world is happening to her all the same. The course of my life is changing and, without close thought, I wouldn't even see it.

— The End —