"antipodes" poems
The destructive daughter
and the delicate one.
The blunt daughter,
and the passive one.
The rageful daughter
and the sad one.
The out burst daughter
and the collapse-in-on-itself one.
The always apologizing daughter
and the always receiving them one.
The destructive daughter
and the delicate one.
Feb 23, 2021
Feb 23, 2021 at 5:55 PM UTC
A pirate sailed south, but too far.
The good ship's prow found
harbors filled with icebergs,
frolicking penguins and walruses:
it began to snow inside his mortal soul.
He dreamed of perfect white beaches,
warm sand, sunlight, palm trees
and (perhaps) a lovely French poet in a slight bikini
lolling like Erato on holiday.
He could taste the sun and coconut on her skin.
It was only a vision, but one worthy of a quest.
He preferred living dreams to dead conclusions.
Many people told him he dreamed too much,
to accept this landfall and be content.
But cold and darkness are not a pirate's lot
and contentment does not appear
in the official pirate's vocabulary.
Even an aging pirate holds true to course,
pinned like a medal to his longing and desire.
More sail, he cried, and turned the helm
toward the islands of his heart,
toward a landfall of warmth and color,
toward hot and willing flesh,
toward parrots and monkeys and blue skies.
Leaving the nay-sayers in the cold,
he headed the only direction a pirate can, further.
- mce
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 11:02 AM UTC
Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.
1.8k
A pirate sailed south, but too far.
The good ship's prow found
harbors filled with icebergs,
frolicking penguins and walruses:
it began to snow inside his mortal soul.
He dreamed of perfect white beaches,
warm sand, sunlight, palm trees
and (perhaps) a lovely French poet in a slight bikini
lolling like Erato on holiday.
He could taste the sun and coconut on her skin.
It was only a vision, but one worthy of a quest.
He preferred living dreams to dead conclusions.
Many people told him he dreamed too much,
to accept this landfall and be content.
But cold and darkness are not a pirate's lot
and contentment does not appear
in the official pirate's vocabulary.
Even an aging pirate holds true to course,
pinned like a medal to his longing and desire.
More sail, he cried, and turned the helm
toward the islands of his heart,
toward a landfall of warmth and color,
toward hot and willing flesh,
toward parrots and monkeys and blue skies.
Leaving the nay-sayers in the cold,
he headed the only direction a pirate can, further.
- mce
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 8:05 PM UTC
Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
The supper and knives of a mood.
In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year
That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms,
An enamoured man alone by the twigs of his eyes, two fires,
Camped in the drug-white shower of nerves and food,
Savours the lick of the times through a deadly wood of hair
In a wind that plucked a goose,
Nor ever, as the wild tongue breaks its tombs,
Rounds to look at the red, wagged root.
Because there stands, one story out of the *** city,
That frozen wife whose juices drift like a fixed sea
Secretly in statuary,
Shall I, struck on the hot and rocking street,
Not spin to stare at an old year
Toppling and burning in the muddle of towers and galleries
Like the mauled pictures of boys?
The salt person and blasted place
I furnish with the meat of a fable.
If the dead starve, their stomachs turn to tumble
An upright man in the antipodes
Or spray-based and rock-chested sea:
Over the past table I repeat this present grace.
1.6k
Skin supplanted by steel,
As pigment falls to paint,
A hollow duralumin chariot,
Ridden by the affluent,
Fortuitous souls, borne to their heart's requests
Down from below, as antipodes clash,
The behemoth clamors, with metallic clangs,
Conflicting privileges, one invulnerable,
Touted lands turned to tarnished wastes,
With a destiny targeted at armageddon,
Humanity's fate glides, like the zeppelin.
Oct 6, 2020
Oct 6, 2020 at 12:36 AM UTC
the stars do not align
like they do every now and then
not as we drove through glaucous willows
not as the stelliferous night twinkled with promise through the sky roof
not as my cupidity for you
not as we danced in each other's arms paradisally
not as the lanugo on our bare limbs blazed a golden white as we watched the sun rise
the stars did not align for us.
we loved like antipodes - if antipodes did not love.
Jul 25, 2016
Jul 25, 2016 at 9:46 AM UTC
What precedes Pain is love, and what precedes grief is Joy..
as life goes on, you will experience either bliss.. or snag,
...
From each of antipodes, you're going to have a slice,
This is the LIFE...
..
This is the life, gives you everyday the opposite of senses, just for TRY.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 10:09 AM UTC
There's this ********** incoherence...
and obsessive cut and paste of mind.
Whatever pasture made its green bed,
has serial murdered...
painted...with head and heels, a lifetime of
tumbling.
Bipedal...the fallacy of bragging rights since
birth.
There's too much to engender without choice,
involuntary antipodes of mind...variations on
madness pawn their humours at storm-crossed
gates.
Strewn...the scrap metal of such limbs.
Oct 31, 2013
Oct 31, 2013 at 8:35 PM UTC
The clock was protected from change in your house.
No Daylight Savings Time admitted to your routines.
We who bordered your life had to adjust or miss your timing.
Your farm the antipodes of ours...straight and neat,
Everything where it ought to be,
No duplication or mess....
A feast for my order-hungered eyes.
I had not yet learned of obsessive-compulsiveness;
I only despised my father's clutter,
His refusal to wear time upon his wrist,
His stubborn old World ways.
I shoveled barley half a hot and muggy day
To load your truck,
Emerged tired, covered with dust,
Raging in a million itches
To receive fifty cents
"To take your girlfriend out."
Most ungrateful, I chafed,
Told anyone who listened...
But now, I smile,
Wishing my labor to have been
A gift, now long ago.
I fell in love with John Deere tractors, gleaming green,
Colored television,
Fresh paint, white and red,
Because of you
Standing in striped Osh Kosh bibs,
Penultimate farmer.
Lydia, your wife,
Danced to the metronome
Of your orderly life,
Escaped only in Harlequin novels
Stacked by her chair.
Until the day everything changed,
Pink drool trailing from your mouth,
Gears grinding as you lost
The memory of clutches,
Tractor care,
Crops to plant
Be ******
A stroke was taking down another man.
A Saturday we moved your wife to town
Near where you convalesced;
Monday, the Baptist preacher found her.
You ordered mahogany, rich and prime,
For us to bid your Lydia farewell,
Then followed, true to form,
Within the month.
Your children ordered oak, solid and strong,
Wheat sheaves bedeck the top,
Inlaid and waiting,
Ready for the coming harvest.
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 12:54 PM UTC
Thoughts pass through my mind like a cold breeze; Whispered words
from two with unknown soubriquets speaking of choices that I don't yet understand.
Or do not want to.
Their ideas are like turbulent puddles in the darkest of caves or the desolate trails at the very end of the antipodes. The very thought of them is to perceive a near future where there is only weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Perhaps this is the stair which I dare not descend.
But am I to sit and wait and hear the sounds of eternities collapsing into nothing before I step onto the rickety echelons of uncertainty?
I can feel it. For as long as there has been rain mingling with the red earth of my heart, it has always been sunny
in my mind.
Feb 5, 2012
Feb 5, 2012 at 4:38 AM UTC
---O---
^^---^^/\^/\--^
the winter Sun is birthed
between the knees of the hills
crying and smitten by the morning star
alone, it makes its cold way
through grey skies
an albatross of tarnished silver
bland and unimpressed by the
roiling cloud cover
it will peek its way out at times
traversing the frigid sea of sky
it finally drowns with a whimper in the
maw of the mountains
to be reborn... made glorious summer...
in the Antipodes
SoulSurvivor
(C) 12/5/2015
Dec 5, 2015
Dec 5, 2015 at 10:20 AM UTC
TAKE ME AWAY TO WHERE THE WEATHER'S WARM,
WHERE YOUR SPIRIT CAN FLY AND BE QUIETLY RE - BORN,
YOU HERE THE MUSIC, REMEMBER THE TIME, FLOODING
BACK LIKE THE SCENT OF EUCALYPTUS TREES AND GOOD WINE;
I HAD A LETTER FROM A FRIEND LIVING IN THE ANTIPODES,
HE SAID THAT HE WAS BUSY PREPARING HIS SUMMER WARDROBE,
I IMAGINED WHITE SHORTS WITH THE INEVITABLE GARISH TOP,
WHILE I WAS SHIVERING IN THE MOTHERLAND MORE LIKELY THAN NOT;
I HAD MY REVENGE - I SENT HIM A LETTER FROM AFRICA
SAYING THAT I'D SELECTED A LIGHT BLUE SUMMER SAFARI SUIT
IN POLYESTER - ALL I NEEDED WAS A PANAMA HAT AND A WHIP,
IT WAS WONDERFUL WITH THE ENSEMBLE COMPLETE WITH A STIFF UPPER LIP;
NOW WERE TRAVELLING FIRST CLASS - THE FORMER THINGS HAVE PASSED AWAY,
THEY ASK ME IF I'M STILL THE SAME - IT'S NOT POSSIBLE SO THEY SAY.
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 5:18 AM UTC
The clock was protected from change in your house.
No Daylight Savings Time admitted to your routines.
We who bordered your life had to adjust or miss you.
Your farm the antipodes of ours...straight and neat,
Everything where it ought to be,
No duplication or mess....
A feast for my order-hungered eyes.
I had not yet learned of obsessive-compulsiveness;
I only despised my father's clutter,
His refusal to wear time upon his wrist,
His stubborn old World ways.
I shoveled barley half a hot and muggy day
To load your truck,
Emerged tired, covered with dust,
Raging in a million itches
To receive fifty cents
"To take your girlfriend out."
Most ungrateful, I chafed,
Told anyone who listened...
But now, I smile,
Wishing my labor had been a gift.
I fell in love with John Deere tractors, gleaming green,
Colored television,
Fresh paint, white and red,
Because of you
Standing in striped Osh Kosh bibs,
Penultimate farmer.
Lydia, your wife,
Danced to the metronome
Of your orderly life,
Escaped only in Harlequin novels
Stacked by her chair.
Until the day everything changed,
Pink drool trailing from your mouth,
Gears grinding as you lost
The memory of clutches,
Tractor care,
Crops to plant be ******
A stroke was taking down another man.
A Saturday we moved your wife to town
Near where you convalesced;
Monday, the Baptist preacher found her.
You ordered mahogany, rich and prime,
For us to bid your Lydia farewell,
Then followed, true to form,
Within the month covered in oak,
Wheat sheaves bedecking the heavy lid.
Inlaid and waiting, you rest,
Ready for the coming harvest.
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 7:57 AM UTC
From ambivalence to ferocity, she
Touching everything at times
Gently her soft hair over
Follicles and skin through
Reeds in marshes and then
Grassy planes
Across thresholds
To the leaves of autumn
From antipodes to tropics
From arctics to alps
Even the immovable
Will feel her
And they too
Will tremble
MChallis @ 2015
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 10:43 PM UTC
Were I invincible or perfect or omnipotent.
But, I am none of these.
Chill wind, shivering frost, cruel sleet
Drive autumn changes in the breeze.
Tilting Earth announces endings,
Announces beginnings at her antipodes.
Death proves itself beneath the sleeping trees...
Feuille-morte beauty of the fallen leaves.
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 9:11 AM UTC
These two had parted once before
when he’d worked in Scotland’s mines.
Now he trekked to the antipodes
to live in southern climes.
He’d see the Emerald isle no more.
Would New Zealand be as fair?
He’d build a new life far from home,
Adventure waited there.
Yet, to never see his home again,
Or hear his mother’s voice.
To venture from the Troubled North
was his necessary choice.
Yet home will never look so fair
As when its left behind,
He’d live and die in a far off land
as part of God’s design.
“I never will forget you, Mum.”
as sorrow choked his throat.
One final hug and then he turned
to get upon the boat.
His ship made way down Belfast Lough
And he watched her from the rail
Til distance made her disappear
as if one beyond the vale.
Jun 29, 2014
Jun 29, 2014 at 1:10 PM UTC
If ever my darling leaves me,
it would always be too soon.
If she were to depart untimely,
I'd be vulnerable to the moon,
Naked in it's consuming mass,
I'd feel it's weight in the heavens.
just waiting for this night to pass,
in hopes my pain might lessen.
If ever my darling has had enough,
and she decides to haste away,
If her love is a lack thereof,
I will forever be in dismay.
If ever our paths divert,
somewhere along the way,
I hope one day to reassert
and walk once more one day.
If ever our puzzle erodes
and pieces will not fit,
we find ourselves on antipodes,
with a love that you acquit,
spare I the hurt of a love you lost
and just rip it fast and clean
save from me any accost
and run to the end, foreseen.
If ever my darling leaves me,
I guess she would be just,
to escape commitment and be free,
and to freedom again adjust,
I wish for her to tarry,
on her wayward saunter,
my burden, alone, is to much to carry
but a burden still to conquer.
Jan 19, 2018
Jan 19, 2018 at 12:17 PM UTC
You and I were walking down a solitary path, one day.
You walked on the fallen leaves, which looked like sufferers of war.
We were at antipodes, your side had night,
While my side had a bright sunny day.
As we walked, you chose to talk of non human meetings,
Where people fed on blood.
With a prideful smile,
You spoke, " I killed two fifty zombies, as they marched towards my farm.'
And I asked you , "Why?"
They could have destroyed my boundary wall.
"Why would they?"
They are bigots.
"They told you so?"
No, but I know, they were.
"So they were a menace to your lands?"
To humanity in brief.
And, you added, to God.
"God " I smiled.
"He told you so?"
No, you said arching your brow,
But it is my duty.
You told me many more stories of how you and your allies saved the World and God.
But our thoughts were like ice and fire.
I told you,
But they are His children.
You killed your siblings.
And your instant reply was,
"Not mine."
So you think that your God didn't made this entire World.
"He did."
So he must have made all that's living.
"True."
Then who were those two fifty, whom you killed?
You were quite for the rest of the journey.
I should have told you,
I wished to learn the answer to that question in this life.
But you were lost in dark.
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 26, 2018 at 5:59 PM UTC
Severed sisters addictively
Seeking out serendipity
Atrophied on antipodes
Eating feasts from antiquity
Jun 25, 2021
Jun 25, 2021 at 7:35 PM UTC