Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2016
perchance an epic was necessary, to consolidate the scattered thinking, and indeed, once a certain life, and was lived with a cherishing heart, the heart broke, and life turned from adventures to a more studious approach, and in here, a comfort was found, never before imagined explorations - of course sometime a tourist in the arts does come, but such tourists quickly fade, and the pursuit becomes more enshrined - to levitated towards epics is perhaps the sole reason for the cherished memory of some - and how quickly all can revolve around a searched for theme, after many incorporations were minded - as one to have travelled the Mediterranean, another to have been eaten by the great mandarin silkworm of the library of Kangxi - heading along the silk route with spices - indeed the great mandarin silkworm of the library of emperor Kangxi; as i too needed a bearing - to inspect the trickster of lore and the godly blacksmith of the north.

by instruction - an accumulation of the the zephyrs
into a vector, headed north,
toward the gluttonous murk of ice, jesting
with aches to the bulging and mesmerised crescendo
of adrift stars captured in the tilting away -
to think of an epic, to keep out-of-time of
spontaneity and thistle like swiftness in the last
days of summer, that Mercury brings the new
tides of the tetravivaldis -
   brought by the λoγος of a γoλας -
for reasons that satisfy the suntan copper of
the ***** - the λoγος of a γoλας - yet not toward
Monte Carlo or any hideout of money well invested
and greedily spent for a charm -
no, north bids me welcome from afar -
this norðri fløkja, this    ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ -
by my estimate, i could not take the nonsense
of numerology of a certain specialisation,
i took what was necessary, i pillaged the temple
of Solomon, perhaps that the dome of the rock
might stand - with its glistening dome and
its sapphire mosaics - i don't belong among
palm trees and date trees - hence i turned to
deciphering and subsequently encrypting -
as i have already with *ᚱᚨᛒᛖ
:
the journey of an Æsir through a birch forest
on a horse.
                    with this method in mind:
(a) ᚾᛟᚱᛞᚱᛁ       (b) ᚠᛚᚢᚲᛃᚨ:

(a)
the need to acquire possessions accumulating
into an estate, is a journey encountered
day by day, although a journey on ice

(b)
cattle only thrive near water,
auruchs did not, and hence illuminated
their way to extinction,
         by way of the Æsirs' harvest
(to eat up diversity of life, and create
a godless world of man).

my escape route came from ᚠ - mirroring שִׂ
although the former standing, the latter sitting
down, although the former fathomable
to my pleasure, the latter unfathomable
to ascribe numbers to letters for patterns -
i seek no patterns, hence my sight turned to
the northern sights, and meanings amplified.
                
the greeks were intended to explore abstracts,
having stated a triangle
they invented the ² symbol and what not,
it was because
they didn't bother extracting a phonetic unit
from something definite,
they classified such endeavours barbarian,
what reasonable greek of 13% reason and
87% reality would extract alpha from
the sound you made when
saying ansur (ᚨᚾᛋᚢᚱ) - i.e. attention -
i.e. deriving a definite sound differentiation
for alphabetical rubrics from a definite thing
(in whatever classification that might be)?
the greeks used the alphabetical rubric of
crafting a definite sound from an indefinite thing,
so they said: acronym, aardvark, assumption,
                       α                 α      α     α,
then they said α² - there are no antonyms -
but indeed there were, hence the Trojan nation
settling in the boot, that's Italy,
the Romans escalated the greek theory
beyond taking out a definite sound distinguished
from other distinguishable sounds,
abstracting what the alphabetic sound assured
a list under alpha: assumption, advantage,
acorn, etc. -
the latins were the first atomist after the greeks,
the greeks believed in atoms, but had no
microscopes to prove atoms existed,
such scientific faith found no parallel;
the latins ensured this was true,
ending with castrato sing-along -
the latins furthered abstracting sounds from
definite orientation which the greeks did
working from ice into iota,
the latins just sang i, i, i -
of course chiral behaviourism of such dissection
emerged - hatch a plan, plan a chisel -
it's very piquant i mind to let you know -
the greeks abstracted nouns in order to create
the alphabet, the barbarians still used
proper nouns to speak proper, the greeks
thus created synonyms and antonyms to add
to the spice of life - after all,
not deriving definite alphas from
cursors that acknowledged points of origins
created diacritical stressing like comma and
semis of colon and macron, not deriving them
from definite things, shunning a helpful
vocabulary bank to an unhelpful vocabulary
banked: synonyms and antonyms the Gemini's
birth of rhetoric;
but the latins were rejected with their atomic theory
of pronunciation, since they became laden
with diacritics - punctuation marks of a different sort,
you can measure a man sprint one hundred metres,
but is that also measuring a man to say
mān or män or mán? i know that the slavic ó = u
given the scalpel opening the ensō to craft a parabola -
but it's not necessarily an accent debate
but a punctuation debate... the emergence of
the diacritic symbols above the letters is due
partly to their joy of the popes listening to
castrato operas and the fact that the romans
went too far... hence the chiral nature of certain
symbols when dittoing - the barbarians used
definite things to assert definite sounds -
the greeks used indefinite things to assert definite
sounds - mind you, if the romans became too
abstract with their little units that became engraved
with punctual accenting, then the greek letters
became laden with scientific constants as necessarily
fathered, unchanging in the pursuit of Heraclitus' flux -
for example... Pythagoras and the hypotenuse:
                            σ / κ² = α² + β² -
           or?
                             c² (ć) = a² (ą) + b² / š (bubble beep
                                                           bop barman backup hop
                                                           of shackled kakah
                                                           or systematic oscillation
                                                           for bzz via burp);
πρ² is still more stable
                                 than what the latin alphabet allows -
hence why greek phonetic encoding was used in
science, and latin phonetic encoding was used in music,
can't be one or the other - added to the fact that
latin encoding had too many spare holes with
the evolution of numbers, and greek didn't have them,
hence β-reduction in lambda calculus and F-dur and A#

the one variant of the grapheme (æ) they didn't include
among expressions: graphite and grapheme
was the variant - gravitating to an entombing
of the excess aesthetic - geresh stress -
somehow the twins match-up to a single womb:
àé vs. áè: V vs. Λ - Copernicus wrote over all
of this with the flat earth uselessness
in terms of navigation - flat earth is useless...
huh? flat earth is the only system that gave
Columbus the chance to explore the new world -
no flat earth no Columbus -
that satellite named Luna was no tool
in navigating across the Atlantic - believe me
i'm sure -
                  or that grapheme (æ) varied like statistics
or like the characters in the book of genesis
that famous adam und eve (kim and kanye):
chances came, chances went:
it was still a draw on the tongue tied decipher:
àè and áé proved another notation for plurality
was necessary, not at the beginning of the word,
but after, hence the possessive article 's,
we could have parallelism, there was a crux,
how once the chiselling of letters came about,
more economic to chisel in a V than a U,
both the same, much easier though...
almost barbaric i might say...
sigma (Σ) enigma rune e (ᛖ) - this compass
is a ******* berserker, god knows if it's
mount Everest or the Bermuda Δ

but one thing is for certain, never you mind how
a language is taught unless you mind it,
not that conversational athenian is really what
i'm aiming at - but a lesson is a lesson nonetheless,
out of interest something new,
richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi,
and what preceded him, namely pan-slavism,
just when the polish-lithuanian commonwealth
did a little Judaic trick of its own,
although snorkelling in the waters of not writing
history for less a time than israel -
you can't beat ~2000 under water - although
you could if your little tribe had an einstein
among them, or proust or spinoza, then
you could effectively become a whale, popping
an individual out from the rubble to say a polite
'hello' and 'when will the dessert be served?'
but indeed, learning a language on your own,
how to learn from scratch, the greek orthography,
and why omicron and not omega,
the give-away? sigma - purely aesthetic reason,
                             νoμισματων

                             nomismaton

omicron                                                 omega

                 you write omicron at the front
                 and omega at the back
                 pivot letter? two: σ     μ &
                 νoμι-                                -ατων
                      ­                     |
                 anything here  
                 will use o            and anything
                                              here uses ω

alike to sigma:
                          χωρας (choras, i.e. country)

sigma (ς) not sigma (σ), i.e. digitalising languages
without a clear connectivity of letters,
block-a-brick-block-a-brick-digit-digit-digit
you learn that handwriting is gone,
two options, your own aesthetic reasons now,
remember, some paired for the ease of handwritten
flow - digitalised language changes the aesthetics,
you make your own rules (considering exceptions
of oh mega mega, ergo revision -

                                       χoρας,

but still the sigma rule, others esp. o mega
you stamp on them like βλαττια, i.e. cockroaches -
κατσαρίδα                 not         κατςαρίδα

all perfectly clear when you explore plato's
dialogue from the book Θηαετητυς (as you might
have noticed, the epsilon-eta project is still
in the storage room of my imagination) -
but indeed in the dialogue, between socrates
and the "hero" of the book theaetetus -
a sample, without an essay on the theory
of knowledge -
socrates: ...'tell me theaetesus, what is Σ O?'
theaetetus: yes, my reply would be that it is
                    Σ and O.
socrates: so there's your account of the syllable,
                isn't it?
theaetetus: yes.
socrates: all right, then: tell me also what your
                  account of Σ is.
                                                             ­   (etc.
or as some might say, a shrug of the shoulders,
a hmmpf huff puff of hot air, impractical interests
and concerns - well, better the impractical
problems than practical problems, less feet
shuffling and nail-biting moments with your
tail between your legs and an army of
intellectuals working out what went wrong
and how history will solve everything by
the practical problems repeating themselves) -
you know that inane reaction - others would just say
Humphrey Bogart and nonetheless get on with it.

some would claim i was begot a second time,
not in the sixth month period of the aqua-flesh,
how did i actually related to the life aquatic,
for nine months i was taught to hold my breath,
however did this happen?
a miracle of birth? ah indeed the miracle of
a crutch for a woman - spinal deformities -
9 months, sort to speak, in water or some other
fluid - merman - a beastly innovation -
next you'll be telling me beyond this life
we turn into centaurs, given the Koran's promise -
you'd need the appetite of a breeding horse
to satiate the 72 - or thereabouts - martyr or
no martyr - 72? that's pushing it -
or as they say among children - a chance playground
without swings or sandpits, but very careless
gravitational pulling toward a certain direction;
nonetheless, they might have that i did indeed
settle of a sáttmáli                  ᛋᚨᛏᛏᛗᚨᛚᛁ
                  við         ­                  Vᛁᛞ
                  tann                         ᛏᚨᚾᚾ
                  djevul                      ᛞᛃᛖVᚢᛚ -
the hands you see, fidgety -
     hond handa grammur burtur    úr   steðgur
     ᚻᛟᚾᛞ  ᚻᚨᚾᛞᚨ  ᚷᚱᚨᛗᛗᚢᚱ   ᛒᚢᚱᛏᚢᚱ  ᚢᚱ   ᛋᛏᛖᛞᚷᚢᚱ
         the hands give an ardent pursuit
                                                 away from rest -
well not that my poems will ever reach
the islands in question - and indeed an
uneducated guess propels me - what does it matter,
λαλος babbler meant anything, indeed λαλος,
language as my own, is a language that i can
understand - and should anyone omit
disparities - a welcome revision would never tease
nor burn my eyes - but the phonetic omission
peeved me off: woad in water, ventricles in a
variety of entanglements - it's just not there -
and indeed, orthographically, if there are no more
optometric involvements of omicron's twin -
then the stance is with you to use whichever pleases,
i can't tell the difference, unless i was a pedantic
student, aged 70, with a granddaughter i wanted
to be wed teasing a millimetre's worth of
phonetic differentiation between the two -
POTATO PA'H'TAYTOE TOMATO TA'H'MAYTOE -
linguistically one's american and the other
is british, which looks like greek and latin
upside-down and in a mirror: pəˈteɪtəʊ, təˈmɑːtəʊ;
or as the spaghetti gobblers would put it:
the tetragrammaton is working on their
texan drawl (dwah! ripples in china) -
or the high-society new england ******* *******
coo with a cuckoo's load of clocks -
before being sent off to england for a respectable
education, something en route Sylvia Plath -
but not to ol' wee scoot land - ah nay - well
perhaps for a year and then talk of north european
barbarism of a deep friend pizza and mars bar.

and when descartes finished with christina
queen of sweden, she became an animate portrait
of feminine attempts at philosophising,
she was basically ostracised from society,
well, not society per se, she didn't become a stray
dog, but she forgot certain functions of
the upper tier - lazily modern man decides
to hide phenomena from understanding
individual instances, with the kantian guise
of a noumenon, hence cutting his efforts short -
indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by society - only after descartes finished educating her;
and indeed to most people a little bit of sloth
equates to an amputation of some sort -
yet only with the x-files' season 2 episode 2
i've learned of the effects of prolonged alcohol
"misuse", that little boxing match in my liver?
it's not a pain as such, it's actually a hardening
of soft tissue - with prolonged alcohol exposure
soft tissue organs harden, notably the liver -
and it's not a pain, it's a hardening.
but indeed queen christina of sweden was ostracised
by her tier of socialites - i'm glad diogenes
didn't get to her, but then again a bit of cloth
goes a long way this far north -
yet unlike the encounter with napoleon by hegel
diogenes' encounter with alexander lasted longer -
which tells you the old method does no service
to a little bit of material accumulation -
but perhaps the acumen was briefer when you were
ably living in a barrel - and to think, as only
that being the sole expression, not so much
a body without organs as stated in the thesis
of anti-oedipus by deleuze and guattari -
a consideration for a body without limbs - prior
to a footprint an imprint on the mind -
carelessly now, a diarrhoea of narration -
how rare to find it - perhaps this idea of epic
poetry is a default of writing per se -
with this my whatever numbered entry i seize
to find escape in it - a lack of ambition -
a loss of spontaneity that's a demanded mechanisation -
by volume, by inaneness - to reach a single
technique accumulative zenith, and then back
into the ploughing, rustic scenery and the
never-bored animals - i rather forget such escapades -
and there i was dreaming of a grand
runic exploration - some imitable game -
some scenic routes - yet again -
Awareness, Bashful and Carefree
Depressed and Eager, Freely
Gaining and Hatefully Ignored
Justified and Knotted Love
Mimicking Notorious Outsiders
Patiently Quiet and
Reassuring Silence
Tentatively Unstable
Waiting, Xenophobic
Yearn and Zany
                        **** you, for leaving me to experience
                        the range of alphabetical emotions.
Lunar Jun 2014
whenever i feel down, i look on to my favorite things:

angels
books
chocolate
dogs
environment
flowers
guitar
h­ugs
ivory
juice
kisses
love
mercy
nirvana
oasis
pizza
queens
rock­s
sweaters
tea
_
vivaldi
wonderland
x-men
yogurt
zebras

but i'm missing
u
(still) in denial
Saumya Nov 2017
Although the skies appear blue,
Blueish white, with cottony hue.
Coloured orange, with fainted red
Dazzles bright at each sunset.

Evening sky, intensely blue,
Fainted is the sunset hue.
Glowworms dance, adorn the hue
Happiness spreads  in the world anew
Into this landscapic purplish blue.

Juggling, days
Klucking nights
Lying stunned in this hue so right
Man, the creature, so curiously few.
No matter it's a day or two,
some hues amaze like a landscapic view!

Orange red, with deep yellow in blue,
Pearly stars, adorn the view.
Quilty cold, in the days with dew
Rosemary looks majestically new!

Sun, the ball of fire for few
Teaches, turns a page each new,
Unknown, interesting, perceivable to few
Vanity is so pale, to take,
Wander, wither, breath well each day.

Xmas may not come each day,
Yawn, smile, admire all days, as uncertain are night somedays
Z**enith meets  only the braves,  let zephyrs cuddle,  embrace your zealousy face.
ABC Poem/Alphabetical poem:

ABC poetry is a short form of poetry. It is normally written to show feeling. It contains five to six lines in each stanza. You may begin your poem with any letter of the alphabet.
The next three lines must follow sequence. So if you start with the letter "G" the next line must start with the letter "H". The last line can begin with any letter of the alphabet.
______________________________________________
Example :

Remembrance

Sleepless, fitful nights, (first four lines follow the order of the alphabet)
Thoughts of you adhere.
Untouchable, love abounds.
Visions haunt me;
Memories sustain me. (last line begins with any letter)
- Anonymous.
______________________________________________

Read and lemme know how was the poem.Thankyou  for reading, reacting, and Commenting!
Danielle Shorr Apr 2015
Are you mad at me?
Babe
Baby
Don't, please
Goodnight
Goodbye
I was
I'll call you tonight
I'm in front of your door
I'm sorry
It happens
It was sad seeing it get colder
K.
Ok sweetheart, sleep well
Ok
Okay
Okay fine
We'll talk soon
What about you?
Where have you been
Where did you go?
Sorry
Sorry.
Sorry
Sorry, I really am
Sorry
You still up?
David Nelson Mar 2010
Alphabetical Order  

amazing are the stars, that fill the eyes of a woman in love,
broken is the heart of a man, who has been turned away,
crowded are the stairways of the souls, searching the ****** glove,
dichotomous minds each separating, between month and day,

emulating the desires, that never seem to be quite filled,
forever left behind in the wake, of the steamy encounters,
gratification comes so close to the edge, of tears that spilled,
humbling the spirit of drive, as she casually saunters

in and out of her trances, thus requiring a special technique,
just as your about to capture, the flag of your quest,
keeping your head above the line, you get just one peek,
lovers separated, never owned, still merely a guest      

might as well step into the path, of an oncoming fist,
never was any remote chance, that this would be resolved,
over and over the words are repeated, like reading a list,
permanently bringing injury to the dreamers involved

quietly, you grab your bags of lost promises and regrets,
resolving to the facts, that are right in front of your face,  
securing the one of you dreams, don't be placing your bets,
trying to hard, seeking too much, another time, another place

underlining the failures, that are displayed on the page,
verification of these unwanted responses, we certainly don't need,
when oh when, can this heartache release built up rage,
xylem pumping the fluid, will it finally bleed

you're standing there now, with nothing to show for the time,
zanyism is quite commonly blamed for the entire episode.

Gomer Lepoet...
- From Rhymes or Reasons Vol I
Luke R E Webster Sep 2012
Alone beside crimson
Destiny exclusively found
Gore has income
Jealous king lounged
Marred nightly often
Putrid, quite rotten
Saved timely use
Voracious with xenia
Yearning Zeus.
I saw this format on preech's page and thought I'd have a go.
It's not easy. That's obvious.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2018
i can't help what i am...
but what i am not is a spoken word
poet: with that generic exasperation
technique of speaking -
as if, on the verge of crying...

but what i can tell you...
i am a rigid person,
there are 3/4 of me that should
have enlisted in the army,
and only a 1/4 that went to
university...

so... given that i'm such a rigid ******...
i thought i'd tell you about
linear and vertical rhyming...
linear?
oh, that's neat & easy:

.................................... end
.................................... bend
..................................... send
..................................... wend....

basically suffix rhyming...
but! but... what Sylvia Plath
introduced?
   oh, my, god...
      transcendent of
the conceptualization of
"the" box...

her rhyme? alphabetical...
sort of...

        it's more than that...
she didn't pay due diligence on
suffix rhyming -end,
   -ing
    you name it...

you want to know what her rhyme
concept implies?

   **** me, it's sassy...

she was a rhyming weaver...
an interloper...
    words didn't have to necessarily
end in the same boundary
of an echo... echo rhyming
by the standard bearers is one thing...
she made tartan rhymes...

tartan rhyming...
kilt rhyming...

                  and it looked something
equivalent to, this:

  ceremony or Potent -
Still sky, obtuSe -
   one might Say love -
  Suddenly,
        black featherS,
black reSpit -
Season of fatigue,
SpaSmodic,
  deScend...
   Stolidly...
       no effigy... Seem...
pompouS...
                         coarSe copy...
      Bell tongue BirdS...
    Shrined on her SHelf...
too Tough to Finish...
  Seize my Senses...
ToTal neuTrality...
   deScent...
                Sanguine...
  bRick dusk...
Prose...
              plaCe...
            pompouS...
Ne­at kNits...
    weedS obScured...
SHe blenched,
miMic...
   deSpite...
baniSH...
    ******...
too tough for knife to finiSH...

      Head...
so profoundly muCH...
       piN legs...
               thoughtS...
So departS...
       S(h)eets...
Sanity...
      Tongue...
Printed Page...
  Twelve...
Sick man's Eye...
nEVER nEVER found
anyWHERE...

goodbye goodbye...
      eXclamation...
the First point...
            GHost...
   Signify...
cuckoo-land of color fields,
CRisp CUsp...
    
        the girl's dancing!
she's dancing barefoot...
no, i can't fall in love with her...
she's, dead!

    but can you see
rhyming vertically?
   all the lettering,
in capital letters?
  deviancy...
   it doesn't agree to your
box standard form of
rhyme, linearly...
  it's vertical rhyming,
it's juxtapositions on a scale
that might elongate
the winding tongue of a snake
in, anything but maracas
rattling...
sssssssssssssssssssssss.....
a wet snare...
   she's teasing...
she has escaped
the tradition of
the traditional guise of rhyme...
she has invoked
rhyme, but as an intermediating
attachment...
          forget the rigid
end-
                   -ing
with a "worthy"
   sympathiz-
                                        -ing...

what a gall...
she makes the housewives of America's
1950s twice as vampire-like,
and thrice as Stepford material...
   lucky blond to leave so much
"crap" behind...
   i could pick the maggots
from her head and make it
a day's worth of fishing
on the banks of Vistula...

she's dancing in the rain,
and all i have is my Cameo cinema
moment
with my cousin, Justine,
running barefoot where
i grew up on the cement...
and then cuddling together,
getting warmer
over one worth of an afternoon...

last time i heard...
her son Leo was born on
the 15th of May,
my birthday...
  but we've fallen out...
when her husband
put a **** under my father's
self-employment
enterprise...
   and undertook
a practice of stealing workers
from him...
great move... when you join
a family...

        nice memory though...
wish my cousin Justin all the luck
she can muster...
but when it comes to family
friendliness?
none....
                 went to her brother's
wedding... was interrogated by
her brother's best man...

   Polish drunk talk...
let's just say...
his date?
   was flashing her underwear
at me from under her magic carpet
ride of a skirt while we
smoke cigarettes and finished
off drinks, being accused of...
trying... to seriously...
hide her... exhibitionism...

   so i started punching myself
in the face to find target practice
should i ever come across
any more Polacks, drunk,
at a family wedding...
   you never know...

           hell... if ******* wanna tango...
we'll... ******* tango! ha ha.
now all i need is the raw
material... my knuckles
are either furry...
or they're itchy...
  can't exactly knock-out
my neighbors dog...
   i need a ******* mug of
a mouthwash advert...
with a grin that's, seriously
asking for a few missing teeth
to rekindle a smile!

— The End —