'rudderless' poems - Hello Poetry

P E Kaplan Apr 2014

The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957

P E Kaplan Apr 2014

The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957

As they walked along after the matinee, the older brother teased his sister, “Hey, guess what, Frankenstein lives in the attic and he’s goin’ get you.”  With a flushed face the little sister responded, "Nah-ah, besides the attic door is locked."  And her brother smirked, “Think Frankenstein cares about locked doors?"

Throughout their childhood, the brother jumped out behind closed doors, terrifying his little sister, and with each fright he gave his own fear seemed to lessen.  After a startle the sister thought, ‘Does my brother love me, like I love him?’, and she concluded, “He must, why else would he try to scare me to death?’

Within the decade, a sudden brain hemorrhage took their dearly loved mother.  Now, untethered in their mother’s love, the siblings changed, tightened, within,  While their father, a traumatized, war veteran, swiftly fell off the wagon, and the brother and sister cast off, rudderless, uprooted into troubled waters.

And with their hearts snapped shut, immersed in relentless grief, they parted ways.  Some years later, their father died, bequeathed them both his unhealed pain. The brother, the sister, slid secretively into alcoholism, conceded the family custom, invested deeply in their despair, the two went on, married, raised families, conformed.

And time went by, as alcohol soothed the pain until the brother breathed his last, his belly taut with fluid, his liver destroyed, a life sentence ended.  While she, the lone survivor, mysteriously yielded unto Grace and was pardoned, recovered, she finally understood, she knew deep inside; everyone did the best they could, even her.

…and within a circle of one; I loved them all forever and ever.

cirhttp://mladzema.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/il_fullxfull-362602814_18vc.jpg

Bruised Orange Oct 2011

Muse wanders the strange landscape of dreams

Bruised Orange Oct 2011

Muse wanders the strange landscape of dreams

While driving the backroads last night, I cranked up my stereo
and let the music take me where it wanted to go.
I'd heard the songs before, but I began hearing a different tune.
Must've had earplugs in before. I drove on, and the music played me.
When I'd driven as far as I could, and lost myself completely down those roads,
I pulled over at some strange station I'd never seen before.
I thought I'd sit a while there and rest, do a little reading from
the book I've been writing. **** my eyes for seeing words there I'd never
read before.  My book was writing me, I had never said a word.

I thought for a while about how you can wake up one day, hear the same song,
read the same words, and they tell you something you've never known before.
I realized then, I'd been driving with my eyes half closed.
Then, as the sun came up, I saw with my naked eyes a strange landscape I had never seen before.

Road signs were everywhere.  One showed I was on I-9, another read, 'Welcome to Idaho'.
I heard gentle clouds roll on by, and felt alone in my wanderings.
I saw paint blistering off the walls of some hotel, and wondered who would save me.
I thought about wicked games,and felt accused. I saw crossroads, up ahead,
with a ***** tonk on one side, wanted to go inside and order a case of finest wine.
I felt so alone, sitting in my rudderless boat (you know how dreams can go).

Then I looked up, saw a man standing at the crossroads
with a golden hammer in his hand.  I wondered if i knew this man,
and wanted him in my boat with me, to sail on the uncharted seas.
I wanted to drown in a deep blue bottomless pool with him.  Then I wanted to
accuse him, for walking into my dream, for standing in the middle of my aloneness.

I looked up at the sky (it was night again, as dreams go) and saw the
stars in the sky.  I wondered if the stars were real, or painted on
some false ceiling.  I wanted to climb a ladder and break through,
to find true.  I wanted to tear down the veils that kept me from
knowing all the secrets of the universe, to burn up the clouds
that hid the sun.  Then I wondered again if the sun was already
shining, if my rudderless boat was being guided by the soothsayer
of dreams.  And I wanted to know if this dream was a nightmare, just a picture
show, or some prophetic vision.

I felt pushed and pulled, with winds blowing a strong gale, and wanted to know if they blew from
the east or the west, but I could not tell, I'd dropped my compass miles back.
I wondered what the man was thinking, if he saw the same strange landscape.
I wondered if he had driven me here, or if we had sailed here together, our backs to one another.
I turned my radio on again, but only heard static, and wished that I could find the perfect song,
to express exactly the strangeness of this tale, to sing the truth.

I wondered again if I was dreaming or awake, if my ears
were hearing the real music in songs, if my eyes were reading
lines as they were written, or if I was still asleep, only dreaming.

Sometimes, when you wake up, you just
want to go back to sleep, and dream a little longer.  And sometimes
you think you've woken up, but you are still dreaming.  How do
you know the difference?  How can you ever tell? And where is
a good soothsayer when you need one?

I'm still wondering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NhqN0KcWAE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLKUfBLJVqE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtfHk2hSlqA
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=b52s+wild+potato&FORM;=VIRE2#view=detail∣=874B55B2ED7446FB849C874B55B2ED7446FB849C
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuaZcylk_o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_l4ZOVJ-ts

Oscar Wilde Jul 2009

Glukupikros Eros

Oscar Wilde

Glukupikros Eros

Sweet, I blame you not, for mine the fault
was, had I not been made of common clay
I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed
yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day.

From the wildness of my wasted passion I had
struck a better, clearer song,
Lit some lighter light of freer freedom, battled
with some Hydra-headed wrong.

Had my lips been smitten into music by the
kisses that but made them bleed,
You had walked with Bice and the angels on
that verdant and enamelled mead.

I had trod the road which Dante treading saw
the suns of seven circles shine,
Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening,
as they opened to the Florentine.

And the mighty nations would have crowned
me, who am crownless now and without name,
And some orient dawn had found me kneeling
on the threshold of the House of Fame.

I had sat within that marble circle where the
oldest bard is as the young,
And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and the
lyre’s strings are ever strung.

Keats had lifted up his hymeneal curls from out
the poppy-seeded wine,
With ambrosial mouth had kissed my forehead,
clasped the hand of noble love in mine.

And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms brush
the burnished ***** of the dove,
Two young lovers lying in an orchard would
have read the story of our love.

Would have read the legend of my passion,
known the bitter secret of my heart,
Kissed as we have kissed, but never parted as
we two are fated now to part.

For the crimson flower of our life is eaten by
the cankerworm of truth,
And no hand can gather up the fallen withered
petals of the rose of youth.

Yet I am not sorry that I loved you—ah! what
else had I a boy to do,—
For the hungry teeth of time devour, and the
silent-footed years pursue.

Rudderless, we drift athwart a tempest, and
when once the storm of youth is past,
Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death
the silent pilot comes at last.

And within the grave there is no pleasure, for
the blindworm battens on the root,
And Desire shudders into ashes, and the tree of
Passion bears no fruit.

Ah! what else had I to do but love you, God’s
own mother was less dear to me,
And less dear the Cytheraean rising like an
argent lily from the sea.

I have made my choice, have lived my poems,
and, though youth is gone in wasted days,
I have found the lover’s crown of myrtle better
than the poet’s crown of bays.

M Harris Mar 2017

This Cold Black

M Harris Mar 2017

This Cold Black

And There Comes This Time, The Day Of Reckoning, The Last Night At Home, Where You Could Reminisce About All Those Moments Where You Could Have Been A Better Son, A Faithful Husband Or A Devoted Father, Reminiscing Those Mistakes You Could Have Evaded In Those Flashes Of Time, The Way You Could Have Gotten Those Flashes Right & Worthwhile By Amending Them At Those Instants Embedded In Those Constants And The Mistakes You Knowingly Committed Without Even Giving A Thought About The Outcome & Its Effects Later.
You Arrived At Conclusions Sometimes Without Even Thinking About The Outcomes Which You Regret Cursing Yourself With Those Empty Question Marks Filled With Greys & The Distorted Mirages Pulling You Against Gravity Into The Abyss. All This Time You Thought You Were Built To Last And Outlast Your Past As You Were Wrong About Fate Eventually Making You Realize Once Past That Gate That You’re Late.
But All Those Lapses Giving A Snap To Your Synapse Are Meaningless Now As You Cannot Control The Upshot Anymore.

All These Eons You Were Breast-Fed Lies By Those Plastic Eyes & To Follow The Congenital Assembly Line & Be Programmed For Idiosyncratic Slaveries You Were Shaped To Be In This World Per The Tint, Race, Money, Religious Conviction, Order In Society & With Hordes Of Other Plethora Of Anomalies & Your Real Purpose In Life Will Lie In The Trashcan Where You’ll Bred & Abused In This Lifespan, Appeasing The World Because You’re The Dog, The Society Dogs.
You Are Mass-Produced In Manner Such That To Be Impressed By The Authority That You Give All Infinite Reverence And Credence To Claim It.

And That Night When You Finally Comprehend To Senses, Suddenly Overall There Is A Different Version To This Sub Version & Those Endless Prayers Searching For Some Tangible Meaning To This Life Are Nonetheless Spiritual In Nature But That’s The Instant, You Are Being Offensive Towards The Established Order By Unleashing Chaos Into The Assembly Line Because The Society Does Not Want You To Make Logic Because You’re The Poster Child Of Anarchy To Them Because You Portrayed Oddity & Suddenly There Lies A Diverse Of Meaning To This Life.
The Society You Were Born To Is Cruel, And The Only Morality In A Cruel Society Is Chance. The Moralities & Viewpoint, Of The Society Is Frenzy And As Virtuous As The World Allows Them To Be, At The Slightest Aberration They Drop Their Principles & Ethos Into Dilemma & The Next Instant The Civilized Are Eating Each Other Up.

Existence Is Arbitrary. It Has No Pattern Save What We Envision After Gazing At It For Too Long. No Sense Save What The Authority Chooses To Impose. This Rudderless Ecosphere Is Not Designed By Vague Metaphysical Forces. It Is Not God Who Kills The Children. Not Fate That Butchers Them Or Destiny That Feeds Them To The Dogs. It’s Established Order We Contemplate As Established. The Paranoia Lingering In The Society Is That Under Great Power Comes Sense Of Protection. Society Has An Awful Track Record Of Sinking To Anything Or Anyone With Boundless Authority, Be It False Gods Or The Fear Injected Into Them Precisely From Their Inception, Sooner Or Later Detailing Them Into Puppets. The Sense Of Authority Clouding Them Makes Them Feel Innocuous.
In Due Course When You Realize What A Joke Everything Is, Being The Comedian Is The Only Thing That Makes Sense.
None Of Us Understand, Society Is Not Sealed Up In This Ecosphere With You. You're Locked Up In Society’s Assembly Line Depicted Divine & Aligned But Misaligned.

We Are Zero But Trivial Amoeba In This Mind ******* Huge Galaxy Of Nothingness. To Assume That Your Opinion Matters, Is Just Arrogant Beyond Words.

So, The Second You Comprehend The Whole System Is Downed That’s Instant Your Clicker Starts Going Down And The Next Moment You’re In The Sights Of The Cross Hairs.
As You Are A Personification Of Malevolence To Society And To The Society You Single Handedly Become Accountable For The Collapse Of The Fabric Of Society And World Order. You’re A ******* One-Man Genocide.

The Secret To Survival. Never Go To War. Especially With Yourself.

-03:21AM

#gravity #regret #time #night #thought #question #moments #mistakes #reminisce #outcome

Bruised Orange Jan 2012

i had not gone fishing that night

Bruised Orange Jan 2012

i had not gone fishing that night

i had not gone fishing that night.

the sun was down, with dark clouds hovering low.
me, in my rudderless boat, staring at the sky.
was i thinking of fish?  I think i was just lost at sea.

i was thinking, (well, i don't remember exactly)
caught up in a brief break in the clouds.  the stars
were out, shining their shining.   i saw them,
but didn't.  i was looking for the moon, her full, hovering
beauty imprinted still on my mind.

but this night, the moon was but a sliver of light, and i...
i was without remorse.  i had come to that place of understanding
that the moon's light neither waxes nor wanes within the confines of
shadow.  she becomes invisible in this shadowland, and perhaps this
is for the best, for who can take the beauty of the moon on a starless
night and call her their own?  she was not mine to have.

and the tide, it pulled me in, it pushed me out;  this motion set about
by the moon. (oh, my moon!)

i looked out, saw the waves come lapping gentle onto my boards.
the crash and slap, the rocking of my boat, shook me from
my reverie.  i looked down, saw these dreams gasping at my feet.

oh, beautiful dreams born of moon and tide, how did you land here,
and why?  i saw your gasping, your grasping at calming waters.

who was i to return you to your sea?
i was only a lost and rudderless boat.
i had not gone fishing that night;
i was no fisherman.

yet i took you home, slipped you into my
warm, salty waters and called you my own.

christopher holmes Feb 2011

Brighton Early

christopher holmes Feb 2011

Brighton Early

+
A bed-sits high and dry,marooned on a sandbank of night.
As  radio 4-casts its nets to isolated ships like me that rudderless drift on into the light.

Still dark outside,no sounds,save the distant echoing bark of a hungry fox ----streets away.
Another dawn ripped blackbin bag of a day creeps and ouzes in

Heavy unfocused lids fogged in the steamy smokeyness of tea and a first ***
plenty of time            plenty of time.
Time before the world wakes to the morning pips and its flushing, brushing, rushing sounds

A greyness gathers just beyound my pained curtains, as with a silent sigh a roosted blackbird clears its fasted throat.

Then as if by magic I 'm carried, scimming high above and beyound this mooring set in a silvered sea,on a welcomed mantra known to all.

As if a calling pray at day break,following each word in a moment subline
               Un angle vole                                                          un angle vole.

Rockall - Malin - Hebrides
         Humber - Fisher - German bight
               Thames - Dover - Wight.

Each single secert understood and noted only by a few as I glide over in paced, pausey surf rolling words

North northeast - 994 - Falling slowly - Low pressure moving away - Gales 8 very poor - Backing 3-4 later - Mainly good - Becoming variable - Syclonic later - Increasing 6-7 mainly west - Swally showers for a time - Fair - Good.

Oh so good, each pure English comforting sounds heard over lapping waves of air.

The bushy wet nosed fox sulks and cowers away from the breaking sun, as the blackbird draws a dewdropped breath though golden nib and tapping gently, call a hidden choir into song just for me.

Reminding me of the things I'd for gotten I care about.

Sharp timed unwelcomed pips flood the ears to prise open sticky eyes from promised dreams and spoon-cuddles warm
As I set forth on wetted pavements, ready to decline into my charted day.

Yet smiling as if blessed and no longer alone
            But filled with early morning salty thoughts of strangers

                  I
                     have
                                yet
                                       to
                                            meet

Dr Emmanuel Moore ABOLO Oct 2014

Rudderless World

Dr Emmanuel Moore ABOLO Oct 2014

Rudderless World

No road, no path
Trembling by the side of ruin
Awake me no slumber
Ayakata, he no sabi

Joshua Haines Apr 2017

8. Stream of Pretentiousness; Degenerates

Joshua Haines Apr 2017

8. Stream of Pretentiousness; Degenerates

It's dark and the light leaks out
like the change in my pockets;
like the blood from her nose;
like knowledge from my head.

And I can feel myself being
  swallowed by this systematic
long dark. I cannot remove myself,
  a gut-worm in the lower-mantle
belly. Watching video-cassettes of
  my birthday. I don't know what
happened to my birthday video.
  I don't know what happened to
my parents or what I did to happen
  to them.

The light leaks, again, and I
choke on my celebri-thoughts;
mentally-******* to the
waves I'd give on a book tour
or studio lot. Talking about some
movie that made some money,
somewhere in Santa Fe or L.A.

The news is channeling my president:
a swollen man that is the physical representation
that a lot of American people are parasitic;
lovers in racism, xenophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia,
homophobia; scared of everything except the 'straight-talking'
magnate they put in office. Not playing president; playing God.

I'd hate to get political, though. I'd hate to ramble on
and on about something I don't know enough about to
**** myself over. I can feel myself picking up steam.
I can feel myself getting redundant but embracing the
bruised ego and poor technique. Loving the entrails
spilling out of the splits of my fingertips;
more beautiful than the brains I bashed on the sidewalks
of old Morgantown. Morgantown, a town so kind you
are gently destroyed by its over-crowded masses,
dying to be different or drunk -- I suppose that's not very
different than most places.

But let's get back to these trees that I haven't even talked about.
Let's get back to the kitchen table with the hollowed hard-drive,
with wires and cords flopping to the sides, like a
gutted spaghetti eater with poor stomach acid.
How terrible. I'll never forgive myself for that last line.

I feel so rudderless. So cynical with a touch of cliche.
I keep pushing back that age for success, thinking
that I have the luxury of choosing. My vocabulary is
limited. My intelligence is assumed; probably a void,
where delusions manifest and asian **** rewinds and plays,
  rewinds and plays.

#23 #stream #******* #writing

Any present moment Jan 2014

An epic journey of random acts

Any present moment Jan 2014

An epic journey of random acts

We aren't given a guidebook of the
    life in store for us.
The best we can hope for
    is a life with
   maximum joy
     and
      minimum suffering.

I struggle with the thoughts....

Have you ever imagined being
     fatherless
     partnerless
     rudderless....?

Small graces that I never did.

So I only had to experience each
once.

Despair that now I am.

Dark n Beautiful Feb 2023

Rudderless

Dark n Beautiful Feb 2023

Rudderless

Your flesh was never warmer to my passion(quote)
My passion was more than you could have deal with
My love of poetry writing, is my secret weapon
I am not gifted, I am black, however I am motivated by words,
I have never found them too difficult to string together,
But to make sense of them, that is another matter
Sometimes I think I am madder at life situation than an the Madhatter
I love to think that I am in love,
But this love thing doesn’t love me,
My mood at my age can change like night and day
And as the saying goes, I can't come out to play on a rainy day (no way)
Loving from a distance, and loving from the heart is also risky,
These are times when ones have to reach for the bottle of whiskey,
Sometimes, I think I am winning, but sometimes I have to take a step back
And recharge, because living in a fantasy world of lies, *** and video links,
Can be extremely dangerous, like the mixing bleach,
Words from his lips in his native tongues,
easily soften my heart, (today my heart is racing for you)
Such poetic, sound, I love to watch as he cleanses his body
For forty-five minutes, all I could think of to say to him
had you ever thanked God for such a blessing:
His smile said it all. I release my eggs: because of the poetic gesture:
My birthday will be in five days,
My age is reducing, because of feelings,
Somehow my body seem to be laughing at the calculation (😊
Rudderless!! But to hell with it , I am not docking no time soon
Ama is on her way to ….

Steven Fried Sep 2013

Sail

Steven Fried Sep 2013

Sail

Addiction's innocent cousin ***** needling into my veins
infected me seasons ago
the ache I once felt still strong as mast's girth

From wind to wind sea to sea we internally roamed
in my mind the map was a treasure trove for exploration
i never was bound to lake shore
wind whipping tide tussling rousing mornings and dusky
nights

My mistresses my pleasure gliding goddess
drift lazily and let me sing praise with shouts "Boom"
but coy or not I coil spry
aged not with time
but lessons learned

The youngest have yet to grow
knowledge of the mystery fables tell
of beautiful passings

Land's unreachable without proper direction
rudderless a hair's breadth magnified out of reach
cool autumn leaves fall on my skiff

She tugs at my heart and at your golden hemp locks
they have all my love stolen from your deck your bow
your stern your timber your core
but let us sail evermore

— The End —