"cadenced" poems
Elan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmuted into words
Transmuted back to breath
in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind -- but where's it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God?
Nah, don't believe it, you'll get entangled in Heaven or Hell --
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing through future cities, Megalopolis or
Cretan village, Zeus' birth cave Lassithi Plains -- Otsego County
farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana --
coffee, alcohol, ******* mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street --
Where does it come from, where does it go forever?
May 1996
4.6k
.
Feint is the Muse,
that looks upon me,
challenging my existence
with deep baleful interest.
Its struggles hard
to contain its indifference
at the mere mortality
that I conduct.
And conduct I do.
As melody takes
centre stage
in a flight of fancy,
constrained by rhythm
temperate, steady,
and insistent.
The cadenced beat
of skins keeping time
to a fanfare of sound.
But my voice is silent,
conspicuous by its absence,
in mute violation
of speechless freedom.
The words won't come,
no song message birthed
for altruism
nor benefit of composition.
The flight of fancy stalls
and gently rocks in a cradle
of anticipation.
Rhythm drops to a meagre
pelvic twitch,
insistence foregone and forgotten
in a cynical parody
of the vocal deficiency.
Velvet drapes lick
the wooden floor stage,
and the performance
has just begun.
© Pagan Paul (14/11/18)
Nov 14, 2018
Nov 14, 2018 at 6:56 PM UTC
In the distance I see them,
Dark billows unfurling
A canopy of grey across the horizon,
Forcing the sun into seclusion.
The rain is coming.
In cadenced formation they advance,
Nimbus clouds on the march,
Curtains of gossamer white hanging
In their trail. The rain is falling.
The hills sigh with relief,
Refreshed at this sweet aspersion,
Renewed and restored
By the Providence that
Established their foundation.
The rain has stopped.
The clouds roll on to distant lands, impelled by a cycle that will see
no end.
And all the earth lies content
In quiet meditation,
Radiant on a bed of primordial mist.
Jun 17, 2016
Jun 17, 2016 at 11:22 AM UTC
It is a night where I must craft my words
or try to weave lines on a broken loom.
To think a poem will spring forth is absurd.
Stillborn inspiration can't be stirred,
emotions drained away. I must assume
it is a night where I must craft my words.
My prayers to Muse fell back to earth, unheard.
All artistry has booked a separate room.
To think a poem will spring forth is absurd.
Striving merely churns my brain to curds,
its thin gray whey runs down some gutter's flume.
It is a night where I must craft my words.
A cadenced resolution's been deferred,
the last two lines will surely be my doom.
To think a poem will spring forth is absurd.
A peaceful flow of writing is deterred
until my buried spirit is exhumed.
It is a night where I must craft my words,
to think a poem will spring forth is absurd.
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 4:15 PM UTC
Those eyes of green
An old man's rheumy eyes
Awash with memories and salty tears.
And sharp eyes of green
That scan the distant skies
To capture shades from down the distant years.
Hardened eyes of green
Which cut with crystal sharp
The foolish prattle of that errant boy.
Weeping eyes of green
That witnessed cadenced harp
Consort with tone and brilliant colour's joy
Aging eyes of green
Now wilt with evening light
To not regret the fade of dying time.
Eyes of green recall
Her beauty's luscious sight
To life's commital of her hand in thine.
Proud eyes of green
Recall his baby's cry
The swaddled infant holding up her hand.
Tired eyes of green
Now closed his lids to die
To wander to his chosen plot of land.
Marshalg
For Grandpa
24 March 2013
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 9:40 PM UTC
Ever the fruit-laden Mother,
whose flickering belly
shows signs of nightless day...
dayless night.
Unadulterated call of plumbed
natures, spelling upon
her belly...creative tensions
unstrung to bind bounty.
She engrained the music
of silence, to filter these
slower light years.
Reflections of mirror
images...cadenced in hope.
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 10:25 AM UTC
fire spitting mouths
ashe stained lips veiny
and engorged, hard loving
is easy for misanthropes
self aware narcissistic
tendencies to the insomniac
life full pleasures and pains
never realized smokey eyes
of an ember beast touched
never felt God in the
Kingdom of Heaven
glass roofs, cracked
cadenced inner light
dimmed and whimpering
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 12:24 PM UTC
I remember the way you laughed while you played the piano. Your dark brown eyes followed your hands, gliding across the keys. They were just broken chords, but you made it sound like a cadenced sonata. I look at old pictures and fall in love with the people my parents used to be: free-willed, adventurous, happy. I wonder who convinced them they'd fall miserable if they didn't change. I burn these musty incense in an effort to get a smell different than that of sadness. But all they do is turn it to smoke and send it drifting through my head. You don't get high because you get scared; I get scared either way. Everyone is enchanted by the sunset; but once it's gone, they leave the moon to be alone. I want to feel what I felt when I laughed and you stared and mustered a "wow' in awe. You've become everything I've wanted, and further proscribed.
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 9:25 AM UTC
Repeatedly crashing upon the shore
White crests succumb to the rhythm
Patterned by the moon, Guided by the stars
Struggling to gain control
A tight grasp
Begging to be released
Racing to the shoreline
Flooding the dunes, consuming the land
Relentlessly, effortlessly
Cadenced and fascinating
Never giving in
Never giving up
The chase is never-ending.
May 5, 2019
May 5, 2019 at 12:04 PM UTC
a hound stretches on a stoop
frozen, lacking a cadenced pant
sun splaying its last beams against
skin, warm tin and damp rigor mortis
the letch inside stammers,
retches
his yellowed nails scratch scabs
on flaking elbows
dried snakeskin platelet scales
too much residue
of asbestos and mildew, of
burnt gilded pages for heat
'cause they were of little use
to illiterate plainclothe'd sleuths
and the crows outside caw
with anemic splendor as
their ***** broods grovel
the inebriate inside
draws open dingy curtains
for the sun was finally subdued
he opens the window
to a finicky drizzle
and was interrupted by horse & buggy
and the tangling of her rosettes
transfixing voracious, beady eyes
as objects of interest phased out of view
we heard all this through the grey horseshoes
trudging through forgotten alleyways
all too loud and dramatic
we watched from fog outside
the ****** tavern where they drank
blood straight from the stomachs of lampreys
downing life, agnostics proudly clapped, with
death and decay on a parsley'd dinner plate
lingering in the hospital waiting room
for an embellished platter of viscera
to fill vacancies, with burnt rot
with a sterile, surgical tang
and jagged accoutrements
all are gorging lovingly,
already anticipating dessert
each solitary phantasm of a person, slouching in booths, on stools
smirks knowingly at the song that's now playing on the a.m. radio
while positioning their utensils, scooping, filling cavernous maws
and they all smiled
as their eyes gasped
as those outside
chipped their teeth
on rusted forks, and sighed
the dead ounce of liveliness failed to
take hold of its slouching bags of bones
and the coyote howled at the sound of the siren curfew
so listen carefully to the inflection of static hissing
the joyful crackle of disembodied voices
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 12:19 AM UTC
She sat in a corn field
drawn into herself,
folded into a world of her own making.
He wrote from distant shores,
spoke of places she could only glimpse
through his eyes.
Her eyes followed his cadenced words.
Syllables as robust as any brew,
waking up her hidden senses.
Distance an allusion.
Language a fibrous connection.
The sun that set over them
was and was not the same.
The paper a beating heart,
the ink an invisible sentiment.
Miles travelled in the twinkling
of an eye across the page,
words rich to the taste.
She dug her hands into the earth
and held onto the flavor.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 12:21 AM UTC
drown me in
the ways I wished to feel
for so very long.
drown me with lyrics
and cadenced melodies to
strange love songs that
so simply define us.
drown me with the thoughts in your
head; pour them out into my head,
and dowse me in the way
you feel about the universe,
and immerse me in a sea of every feeling you
have felt, and describe to me why
you are how you are because that is
all you really know. and all I know is that I
am here, and my fear of drowning is slim
to none because I
am
drowning
in
you
Jul 8, 2016
Jul 8, 2016 at 12:20 AM UTC
I sing our song that cadenced whisper
I'm afraid to say our song is over
My exertion to turn your sky bright has run thin
So I give in, a silent sin in the wind
From within
I fall out instead of in
Out of love with you
so soon on this night
It's not beacause of your fright
We never fit quite right
And that's alright
I'm not your only source of light
Nor your fleeting running knight
You have to fight to see the light
Now I give you smite
I'm so sorry
But this is not permanent blight
Please stay safe tonight
Despite my bite
(C)
Oct 29, 2018
Oct 29, 2018 at 8:41 PM UTC
The breakfast nook brightens,
suffused with impertinent sunlight,
arrogant, intrusive, disrupting dystopian
anticipations to dare yield the repressed,
now untethered from their despondent moorings:
grinning, chubby-faced sunflowers
electing a cadenced dance,
the pump, pump, pump of Hip Hop
thumping behind bodega counters,
the ponies of Assateague,
slick with lather and hope,
denuded thighs shifting in languid heat
atop hillocks of powdered sand,
the Jack Russell hurtling skyward,
disc clenched, her smooth white coat
suspended against nimbus curls
tossed carelessly upon a blue-black canvas,
Aquinnah, hallowed, striated escarpment,
resplendent at the shank of day,
fireflies, ice cream, and the irresistible beckon
of the evening pines that rock to the day’s completion,
whistling, familiar, reassuring.
Apr 19, 2020
Apr 19, 2020 at 3:00 PM UTC