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Deep May 2019
The 'gyre' hints arrival-
Twenty centuries making room
For a new epoch,
I’m a modern bird now,
I may sound haphazard, troublesome, and brooding
unimportant topic for hours,
It's up to you to lend ear or not;

I was a winged rooster confined to land only,
Now I’ve become a 'hawk', with knowledge of flight
perhaps power too,
Seeing the world from far above
Envisioned me a seer sight;
I see the world functioning; the lowliest on top,
the best in daze, and mediocre relishing mediocrity,
One or two good men wasting
life in poetry which none cares.
Oblivious armed men guard the periphery;
White termites gnaw the door at the Centre.

At this height, all seem different,
I can’t relate with my earlier self;
My knowledge seems nothing but
a frail sound in a vacuum.
When I became 'conscious'-
My dreams stopped being dreams—
My thoughts were invaded daily—
Life evolved in million years—
'God is dead', the universe all naked.
We’re the supreme, the Satan both;
Busy in triumphing Desires.
Converging all— blazed my beliefs.

We’ve progressed too much, portends
trembling of the earth
And smoke eclipsing the sun.
'Death I breathe',
War looms again,
Life is traded in forfeited currency.

I see the world functioning,
I know one or two tricks too to cheat,
To assault, to ****, to loot.
I can foresee the end—
Its good to die starving then
Fly in the proximity of land.
gyre; comes from WB Yeats,
Hawk; Ted Hughes (Hawk Roosting)
Freud's term - Conscious, Nietzsche's quote 'God is dead'
Shelley Apr 2019
My baby is a headfuck
Is someone getting the best of you?
I tried so hard and got so far

And now the end is near
Turn around bright eyes
It’s time to say goodbye

I want to break free
It’s my life, it’s now or never
Take me, anywhere, far away, from here

Made a wrong turn once or twice
I’m hanging by a moment
There’s still tomorrow, hold on, hold on

With a rebel yell
Like a champagne supernova in the sky
It’s time to try defying gravity

And you can tell everybody
I’m moving on up
And you’re gonna hear me roar

I’m free as a bird
I believe in a thing called love
And I’m feeling good
Alex Nov 2018
It makes my flesh crawl to hear you
Yesterday, you know.
He should’ve been at the funeral
Friends and relatives of the missing gathered
Like a flame made weak by lies.
The good news was pounced upon and passed on
It couldn’t be a coincidence
The man's head had been sawed open
You didn’t close the door.
You let them in.
You killed him.
Norman dePlume Jan 2016
I went to the river last night
Dreamed of being a river and sleeping like a river
You searched for a **** who was like a river
Along the East River and the Bronx
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
River! that in silence windest
On its way to a rendezvous with some river
"The Piers" is a Cento made of lines from Jimmy Santiago Baca;s "Voz de la Gente;" Federico Garcia Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman;" Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry;" and lines from Longfellow and Ashbery.
(c) 2016.
Norman dePlume Jan 2016
The possibility of free declamation anchored
And lucid, inescapable rhythms
Do have meaning. They're strong as rocks
In the deep-toned Aeolian mode
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
A Poet could not but be gay,
The Impotence to Tell –
Still makes a poem a surprise!
The possibility of free declamation anchored (John Ashbery, "Street Musicians," Selected Poetry, page 207)
And lucid, inescapable rhythms, (Wallace Stevens, "13 ways of looking at a blackbird")
do have meaning. They're strong as rocks. (Frank O’Hara, "Today")
In the deep-toned Aeolian mode (Lasus of Hermione )
For the listener, who listens in the snow, (Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man")
A Poet could not but be gay, (Wordsworth, "The Daffodils")
The Impotence to Tell – (Emily Dickinson, poem 407.)
still makes a poem a surprise! (Frank O’Hara, "Today")
Norman dePlume Dec 2015
The fundamental things apply
Or that proud Aragon bent low his head,
is Achilles possible side by
side with powder and lead?
1 Herman Hupfeld, "As Time Goes By"
2 Oscar Wilde, "Portia"
3-4 Karl Marx, "A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy"
Norman dePlume Dec 2015
We met at the bar and I formed a new band
With their feet full of tar and their head full of sand
Yes, I got a desert in my toenails,
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
1 - Oigăn
2 - The Beach Boys, "Don't Back Down"
3 - The Rolling Stones, "Sweet Virginia"
4 - Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias"
Norman dePlume Dec 2015
"Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?"1
The Rose Is Obsolete,
But,2 her perfect feet,3
A poem should not mean / But be4
An axe to break the frozen sea
within us.5
1 Robert Browning
2 William Carlos Williams
3 Christian Bök
4 Archibald MacLeish
5 Franz Kafka
Jaanam Jaswani Jan 2015
I've always enjoyed thinking about the reasoning of our existence
Man was made in God's image
Then came woman to comfort man
Which u did by the way. Thank you
If eve never ate the Apple, man would have been immortal
So most men blame women for not making us live forever

But she did anyway
It made God decide a place in the heavens for us
So in a way, even the first woman knew exactly what she was doing
She did an exceptional job
props to adam for deciding that he's human enough to ask for help.
Jaanam Jaswani Dec 2014
A door in the mind blows open -
It floods with grey matter
And hot stares.

Ashes of darkness
Coupled with
Tears of growth

This is incomparable.
Roller-coaster rides
And unrecognisable mirrors;

We've steeped into a portal of surrealism:
With sins and judgement calls that question
The very essence of our hearts.

I really do not want to grow up.

I'm a pair of pigtails who can't
Climb up a step.
Push me, push me, but I can't reach.

When I feel my faith restored
In the overlap
Of green scenes and dental dexterity -
I can only think of one line to combust me:

*"He's just being nice."
Bits taken from 'The Planners' by Boey Kim Cheng and 'Where I Come From' by Elizabeth Brewster.
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