"circumnavigating" poems
The tenderness as they described it is circumnavigating more than the ******* and the roundness of my protruding *******
Perhaps by tenderness of the breast, what they really mean is tenderness of the soul and the emotions one hurriedly tucks under the crevices of their *****
If one imagines how ******* are anything but tender, with their ferocity of nurturing life and their wholly encompassing nature to weigh and weigh and weigh
Weight carried by a mother,
Shed off by her daughter,
Caressed by the one she lies with in the crevice of her soul and the gap between twin XL bunk beds and walls full of picture of people who no longer weigh her down
It's the feeling of nostalgia and nostalgia feeling this tenderness growing from one's *******
Growth of the ***** of life as a life imagined is destroyed, nullified, kaput.
But most of all she feels nostalgia.
Nostalgia for the people whose tenderness she felt,
Nostalgia yes for her brother and grandmother cloaked in love around her neck like crystals from an iridescent silver clasp
Jun 1, 2015
Jun 1, 2015 at 10:36 AM UTC
for Harlon Rivers
the river potion,
the river portent,
the river potent
it is all of these and not one
he is bank sided,
observing the false idols,
the image mirrored
in the glass of the river
transfigured molecularly
he becomes something ferried frothily, forcefully
as if a twig
or a small thing of human manufacture,
an object tossed up airborne-repeatedly
his poetry:
the clash of particles at the many junctions
of objects and water, eddies and the currents,
ceaselessly circumnavigating,
searching revisionary pathways
directed,
but randomized,
prisoner of the flows,
servant to the wind's directives and the
earths magnetic indivisible undulating waves
thinking,
this life,
its unsteady gait,
the irreverent wavering of drunkenness
resultant from potent potions,
portents of inopportune position
in him,
my own histories,
my poetic recordings
also become
water borne,
watermarked,
replayed back for me,
for erasure, censure, closure
and rededication
this River
is a tapestry,
a torn map,
drawn on broken shards
of slivered water,
living with all the others
but we,
are the untitled,
we,
are the un-entitled,
and he is the
Rivers
<•>
Aug 17, 2017
Aug 17, 2017 at 2:36 PM UTC
Ophelia...smote egress, you are Rimbaud's:
"Drunken Boat".
The river you fell asleep upon found you a sea.
Your bones knew no seabed--poppies, marigolds,
orchids, black roses fill your eye sockets, mouth and rib cage.
You substantiate what color the sea may give your lay.
Its foamy waddle has signaled you to one too many
climes...an orison broke open.
What strain of tragedy now holds you, spine on depth,
eye sockets on sky?
You dove headlong into the Shakespearean maelstrom--
where mortal coil confounds, chin-up darling.
Great winds fish-scale your waters, only to invert their maw.
There are lines daily of sea's breadth, whereupon its
creatures come single file to kiss your bone.
Ophelia...wrested from river to sanguine sea, shedding trails
of flesh.
If bones were the eye of a needle...you've pulled through,
heir to tragedy--circumnavigating your infamy.
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 10:25 AM UTC
It’s like spreading your arms in hopes of flight –
Catching the wind and holding it just right…
Every subtle gust grasping your body like a sail,
Winning the battle against gravity without fail,
Fighting through the impossibilities, the improbable,
And entering the realm of weightless freedom - unstoppable…
Soaring above the clouds of an orange sky,
On passed the day and into the night we fly –
From here to the moon and beyond the stars,
Floating through the cosmos - leaving the world afar…
Gliding passed this adventure like an epic dream,
Not bound to conventional rationality, or so it may seem…
We find each other dancing amongst the clouds,
Circumnavigating the universe like gods, reckless and proud –
Revelations of astronomic proportions are manifested…
Escalating our feelings, as we now become more invested,
An Armageddon of emotion, epically destroying the world; vying,
For your love – for my Darling, your love? Well, it’s like flying.
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 10:43 PM UTC
Morning drops like a parachute,
circumnavigating
the irrational things within her.
She drew the grim cartwheel
--crayoned images of kids in closets,
and blackens them into
illustrations of war.
She sleeps on bleak days
with young cameras,
Lucy under the tongue,
rosaries at the border
feel like pins and needles
to an adrenaline sorceress
in giallo approach,
her eye in a labyrinth,
the eye she lost in the Crusades,
filming streets below
the color of dark Roman wine.
It's a staring contest,
waiting on rooftops
in stages of collapse,
there she lives or dies
at the dividing line with the grave.
Jan 20, 2024
Jan 20, 2024 at 5:51 PM UTC
The following statements of truth were brought to you
Not through, but circumnavigating fated parameters
Of insane, yet normative, largely uninformative
Mechanisms that formally give birth to ********
And instead, strategically splicing said bounds with
Ideal variables derived from the courageously quixotic,
Unrobotic, and outraged agents of, and for, capital Real:
The train of corporate reasoning derails so fast
To follow is to snap the head backward,
Far past angles within measures of pleasurable fit
And open gates to deluging tangled circular
Failures of logic that trick and co-opt the proletariat.
We are Present-Ambassadors with broken flux-capacitors
Demonstrating a consistent tendency toward error
In efforts to obtain diplomatic access to a future where
The same reemerging deficits do not manifest unfixed.
One of said deficits may include all positive freedoms.
For the record, it shall be noted that civil society
Currently arrives implicitly to find it compliantly fine
To promote systems of labor designed to illicit behaviors
That will eventually undermine the actors of exhaustive work
And make benefactors of those complicit in crime.
As case studies of this paradoxical paradigm, we observe
Nations signing trade agreements aligned with
Selling more of the goods whose extractions have
Cataclysmic exactions upon locals contracted not to resist.
Those who take issue with this are directed to appellate institutions.
The projected scarcity of over-consumed poisons causes fear
Which leads to faster hoarding and more ex(t/p)ensive death.
Thus, most human behaviors presently inflate pricing, popularity,
And rapidity associated with committing system-wide suicide.
As shackle-some power consolidation bends toward a transnational peak
I hereby slide-tackle these forwarded trends, seeking goals of the rational.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 4:16 PM UTC
Our bed is the prayer rug where I found God.
Yeah, THE God –
Not circumnavigating morality
Or bones of old saints
Lonely illusions of the sad and middle-aged
All Fat Tuesday freakshows in comparison
Our bed is the altar of sacred rites –
Marked with the devil’s big black Sharpie
And the intricately crocheted lace of sin
Nightly baptized in warm, honey-coated nothing
Pink patterns of iron and salt on linen
Painted idols on the shrine –
Absolution pours through drafty windows
Older than our bodies
Glass frosted by years without suds
Only rain
A holy city of yours and mine –
With gentle pyro ways
Stone and mortar become flame
The balustrades collapse
You light candlewicks with your fingertips
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 10:31 PM UTC
My poems, where are they from?
Westerner.
An appellation, of the 'hood of my nation,
Customary identity association,
But not one that springs to mind,
When they inquire, as they do,
Hey man, tell us about your "self."
But there is no deniability,
At least three hundred years,
That my father was aware,
Europe to America,
Westward ** the seeds sown.
From the banks of the Lippe,
Ocean crossing to NYC,
From the Krakow Ghetto
To the shores of the
Manhattan Indian Reservation,
By the banks of the grandest river Hudson,
They journeyed, they sojourned,
Staying for awhile, scattering across the Midwest,
"Coming to America."
Yet out West,
I am an Easterner,
My hometown teams,
In the East Division,
And this schizophrenia
Is non-problematical.
But where are my poems from?
I have studied the time zones,.
The AM's and the PM's.
I know when I deliver this to you,
If the sun is rising or setting,
Whether to greet you with
नमस्कार or magandang umaga,
Greet you with a "Good Sabbath!"
Or an Insh'Allah...
But where are my poems from?
Bog of technical definitions,
Matters not, my poems have no
Passport to be stamped,
The Customs lines they cross are the
Customs of mine and yours.
The are both immigrant and emigre,
Experienced, well travelled, they familiar
With the right satellites to
Grace thy welcoming space.
Tap dance, recitations of evasions,
Answer the question man,
But where are my poems from?
You tell the when, the how but not the
Where.
We can't wait much longer,
The inbox heavy with homework,
Your poems to love, like and take.
Don't you see?
They, born in the West,
For lack of a better answer,
Clock and setting sun racers,
Surfing the Atlantic, Indian,
Circumnavigating the Pacific Isles,
Is just the course they take
When out my window sent.
But is that your answer,
Their path, to the single quest,
From the West, is that the best
Answer you can equivocate,
Where do they come from?
**No.
Obviously,
They come from you...**
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 6:42 AM UTC
Rippling down the stream
Of many peoples consciousness
An effervescent future life
Stripped of this abhorrent distress
A future filled with study
Free for each and every human being
A world with no false borders
A world with far less disagreeing
And a universal language
Forged with available technology
That translates in real time
Enhanced with anthropology
Giving us a precise understanding
Of how each other achieve solutions
A pragmatic communication
Circumnavigating ****** revolutions
We would calculate the earths resources
And how to evenly distribute them
Then we would dispose of pointless cash
Like ill people dispose of phlegm
Our centralised political weasels
That do far more harm than good
Would be replaced by microchips
Programmed to not be misunderstood
It is an interesting proposal
To those with a humane conscience
But to those smugly enjoying advantage
I guess it is annoying nonsense
So we must wait for millions to be displaced
For total world economic collapse
The greedy spoilt brats will listen then
Or will they continually relapse?
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 11:59 AM UTC
1
He leant down
Quietly carving his name into the sand;
The pursuing waves,
Repeatedly rippling forward, with
The force of a motorized modern army
Gunning down civilians,
Dragged it clean.
Flies loquaciously buzzed around his head,
As, crushing down seaweed,
He carved his name again.
2.
The roots dug deep, pushing against
The soil. The particles spread apart
With sexless ardour. The man,
Of a tolerant disposition, wrenched
The roots free with drenched hands.
Nothing lasted forever.
3.
The yellow and green of the sunrise
Turned swiftly into unpretentious browns
The light changing shape as the
Morning matured and the sun
Rose further in the sky. Pumped up
Clouds rolled sinuously along, combining and separating
Like fantastic amoeba.
4.
And so it continued
Under the burning sun; more spiteful from year to year.
The man said nothing
As he climbed into the salt water,
Gulls circumnavigating above his head,
With nothing to say or remember
Except the lines in the sand.
Dec 11, 2016
Dec 11, 2016 at 6:34 PM UTC
Believe I am ruined
Habit of believing them
Always made me their followers
Even they proved thorn in rose many ways pricking other
Wanting or not wanting them
I sold my time further and further
Consequently, passing of era gave temple brown brother
Swallowing spit and even believing
Weightage of vote turned pale
Youths of both sexes decreased from my town brother
Couching in sofa their faces glow
As if almighty they are for all and for time
Consensus or process of opinion
Dying in my lap untimely brother
Believe I am ruined not having to drink pure water
Name of disease appears day by day
Killing numerous one after other
Town’s rumple in the evening and night
Tries to extract beautiful glamour
Poor they are even not know culture of death soaring hoard
Orphan children piles themselves
In my ruined town for sake of future
Certainly someday their turn of plight signals them come brother
Why a zero invention circles in me
Circumnavigating hopeless culture
When will those skyscrapers nod to salute my poor brother?
A class of enthusiasm and spirit glimpse
In the light of TV channel always
Programmer holding Mac to me and me like thousand brothers
Flown jets in the aerospace indicate
Dollars return bringing happiness for family
Suppressing heart by two hands see coffin’s of youth brother
Believe I am ruined in earth and space
Hesitantly seeing behave for soil, water and youths of village
Believe I am ruined seeing, leaving to respect youths’ spirit for.
Apr 20, 2015
Apr 20, 2015 at 6:38 AM UTC
Let's breathe.
Let's place our feet in the mud
and count the birds' songs without numbers
but with our souls
Let's let the branches speak to us,
the moon flood our skin,
the sun flood the land,
the flood chisel the river,
the bed grow to include us
Let's see life so precious circumnavigating
pushing on differently a little changed
Soon we succumb to the same
So laugh with a grim love and peace
that you come from the sun
sister the moon
become the mud
and the branch
that the circadian chatter of birds
will serenade
as we breathe.
Nov 30, 2013
Nov 30, 2013 at 10:10 PM UTC
We smuggled ourselves
on endless ribbons,
circumnavigating
towns full of iguanas.
Licking summer skies,
we displayed
kaleidoscope-eyes,
wore blue ribbons
in our hair.
Nothing compared
to the chivalry of the times,
naievity ruled us
like bosses, yet we
slayed with such splendor.
No prisoners taken,
just scars given,
along with tales,
stories from the borders,
our lives lived on the fringes,
hanging on endlessly
to lost dreams.
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 10:12 AM UTC
But the road is a dead end.
The raccoons rampage your cooler and
The compass moves no more.
The stars stay in a moving place.
Circumnavigating your home upon
Every hour.
The poor, poor girl wanders the
Desolate halls. Books strewn on the tile.
Where shall she go? What shall she do?
The toothbrush moves redundantly so,
Updown, updown,
Updown.
Free-verse haikus, a figment
Of the imagination. Five-seven-five
Forever.
Molasses spills from every orifice,
The throat's opening blocked by
Slop and gunk.
Will anyone help?
One would like to think so, but
No such luck.
Stare in the mirror and
Comb your hair, your train
Is boarding now.
Apr 24, 2015
Apr 24, 2015 at 6:09 PM UTC
i wrote that drunk
i was trying to bypass
an impasse
lucked out and
circumnavigated the
rabbit
ran into the fox
he stole my color
only to find it again
at first light
and now i nod
to the speed of life
the unceasing turning
of greater and greater
wheels
the lightness of death
as it passes
there's no
circumnavigating
that
Jan 30, 2021
Jan 30, 2021 at 7:47 PM UTC
In the twenty first century
freedom looks to finally find
The cradle of humanity
come to test the ties that bind
How is it that the continent
from which we all must have come
Is only now finding freedom
out from under a despots thumb
We have surely come full circle
circumnavigating the world
Bringing us back where we began
while enlightenment is unfurled
The masses cry out for relief
they ache for the chance to breathe free
They want self determination
all deserve it as much as me
We lend our hearts to Africa
let them hear voices cry aloud
That they may know we weep for them
in suffering they may stand proud
Tate
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 10:23 PM UTC
I turned my attention to the water, and I was suddenly struck by the immensity of everything.
“The world is so big,” I said aloud,
more to myself than to him.
He nodded, but I couldn’t shake
the feeling that he just didn’t get what I was saying.
I didn’t mean, “the world is big.”
I wasn’t talking about the vastness of the seas’ endless waters
or the sheer size of the globe we walked on.
I was talking about the infinite
nature of the world, how it was stuffed full
of corners and niches that I would never see.
I imagined all of the homes, filled with love, with shame, with something
in between.
A bee, circumnavigating the area around a wilting tulip.
The involuntary wringing of a grandmother’s hands during tense moments.
A boy practicing violin.
A wedding, a birth, another wedding, a death, a funeral, and the continuation
of life around the hole left by the dead
until the cycle continued so much that the hole was filled.
I imagined the ports where ships docked and tied up between voyages, the cobblestone streets of French towns and the mountainous landscapes of the past.
I pictured dogs, scratching on fences, and a girl
brushing her hair by an open window.
I saw the corners and pockets of life, shared with the world
or kept to oneself. The gaps behind stoves,
the crannies seen only by blind mice and frightened roaches,
the dark tunnels beneath the earth. I saw in a flash the water parks where children played,
the quiet moments of morning coffee reveled in by morning people
who rose before the sun.
I pictured the greasy back-alley of a fast food joint
and realized that, for better or for worse,
I would never see
even a fraction
of what the world had to offer.
Sep 11, 2023
Sep 11, 2023 at 3:38 PM UTC
Don’t you know, young one
That you can’t have both
The odyssey of sailing a raging sea
And the tranquil rest of silent waves
Don’t you know, passionate adventurer
That a hard-fought journey — the one they sing about in songs and tales
Is only because of pain endured and loss
You can't just throw the One Ring in any volcano
Don't you know, wandering genius
that eradicating a single problem
leads to more "success" than being well rounded
The names you know did one thing and one thing only
often costing them everything else
Don't you know, people-pleaser
that anyone can tell them what they want to hear
and garner applause
****** was loved by the Germans
MLK, hated by his country
yet history does not point and say
look at that fearless leader!
The one who committed genocide and freed his people from debt!
Don't you know, Byronic Hero
that your flaws define you
but do not make you a hero
It's the actions despite your flaws
It's tales of overcoming, circumnavigating the things that inhibit you
Don't you know, reader
that the words on a screen
even though you use them to fly
do not allow you to escape forever
control your descent
learn from your flight
Don't you know that your thoughts become your actions?
Don't you know, writer
that your medium is language
and like any good painter, it's about splashing color
where color needs to be
don't water down your words by speaking every time the opportunity comes a'knockin
Dec 4, 2018
Dec 4, 2018 at 1:35 PM UTC
navigating a conversation
is circumnavigating a globe
a lexical darkness invokes
an expected step in the stairs
that was never there to begin with
seemingly constructed soundly
its revolving linguistic doors
halt and close shut precisely
when an attempted entrance is made
an impossibly difficult rhythm to gauge
except it seems as though everyone else can
alien colloquialisms loom
as familiar judgements rise
surrounding clapperboards echo
as larynx follows suit
interests watered down
manufactured in plastic casing
arbitrary convoluted theorems
of etiquette and mind
as clear as matte black
and as legible as handwriting in transit
as pleasant as disease
yet as necessary as water
Sep 16, 2024
Sep 16, 2024 at 10:58 PM UTC
All beyond reaches of our own
Stretch of sea, land of the deep
In deathly still waves
Carried the weight of prophecy
Circumnavigating ---
Wrecked ship, so as I
Syphoned by the time
Pitch black in heart of sea
In this river of abyss, wake of sorrow
Darkness shrouds our being
Colors of my soul stolen
Fading, further and farther
From my spirit
Drowning into your darkness
As I gaze into abyss
And gaze upon mine
See no reflection
But drowned to your eyes
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019 at 2:57 PM UTC
Death may come,
to some sweet souls
we know this -
much too quickly
there in a flash,
- in a heightened dash-
perhaps not even sickly,
Oh how that fate-
so mercurial,
it doesn't tell us -
so often why,
as we gaze in daze,
upon our solemn dead,,
an throw our hands up to the sky,
we ask of our dear stars above,
just why'd they have to go an die?
As we are really sad for only just ourselves,
we're just not ready to be done,
so stuck there in our bad goodbye,
still looking for the shining sun,
parting is such sweet sorrow
when it's with the only "one",
To leave the lovely Earth,
a blinking eye,
before to grasp a changing thought,
to look up in a changing sky,
for the answers dearly sought,
or even only wonder why,
it wiped away a life so fast,
and suddenly-
it seems for naught,
Her people they not with her now,
as she lay so broken and forlorn,
until the strangers come to call,
her death-
it was perhaps just a chance to warn,
To expire in a cul-de-sac,
as they circle 'round her now to grieve,
watching as they march as one,
to see the only way -believe,
believe me,
they come to only bid farewell,
not to punish or a bone to cleave,
as the body fails,
gone away - a binding heave,
As a rolling tube of rubber brings
about the ugly severed end,
and a hard black inflated reality,
it comes around the final bend,
barreling down on a tiny female life,
no hand to hold-
not one to lend,
but the birds they came,
with a message we should send,
Harbingers come in the quietus here,
they come to dance in sacred feather,
an some say rare and very strange,
and predictors of the coming weather,
I think that might be true, I do,
but what do circling wild birds
really tell?
circumnavigating the dead of Earth,
while in the sadness do not dwell,
and still I'm sure they are afraid of those tires,
but those fears they only quell,
They circle round to pay respect,
an she an enemy in their eye,
still they only ferry her,
an wish her home
a last goodbye,
A ritual of death and life,
performed before the alter,
a spirit sighs -a soul she dies,
her body could only falter,
death may come,
they fear it - not,
and I believe they still-
believe no hell is hot,
How?
How do these wild wild birds,
understand better than we,
some how?
Ma Cherie© 2017
Mar 22, 2017
Mar 22, 2017 at 11:51 AM UTC
what message do you bring
blue and gold dragonfly
taking my attention
as you dart and turn
where are we going
my eyes travel with you
over and under
around and through
we buzz flower tops
seeking feast or rest /
it is your quiet song that sooths me
on lonely cloud filled evenings
endlessly circumnavigating the pond’s edge
only ever stopping momentarily /
breathing deepens
your wings engulf me
sinking into a soft and inviting
exoskeleton
you transport me /
flashing neon laser architecture
silhouetted pyramids pass
increasing speed
as we careen
multidimensional beings
statuesque
gaze through me
looking deep into a subconscious
imprinting designs and rhythms
asking me to carry something back /
the alarm buzzes and I am reminded
on the windowsill
a perched dragonfly twitches a wing
dial turns twice to a 9 a.m. position
and fly’s off into the morning sun……
my mind reels trying to remember
fading dreams carry the
idea of a message into the ether
I sit on the edge
contemplating /
Aug 31, 2016
Aug 31, 2016 at 2:18 PM UTC
We recede back into the depths
Our minds harboring tangled webs
Giving credence to griefs and sorrows
Preferring to live in the past
We retrace footsteps back to the beginning
Fantasizing other routes
Of chances never taken
Alas that is all we do
Circumnavigating parts we already lived
On our long search for bliss
We find ourselves mesmerized by angst
Forever tormenting fragile hearts
Like once was not enough
Wandering awake we are black and grey
Daydreaming our eyes see more vividly
We lay tired but never sleep
Cogs of our fantasies turning evermore
Insomnia such a faithful companion
Never wanting to leave us alone
Jan 7, 2016
Jan 7, 2016 at 7:41 PM UTC
My heart isn’t broken
It’s dented in places
I’m rather accident prone you see
With damaged wipers and broken hazards
This muscle is the heaviest machinery
Oct 6, 2020
Oct 6, 2020 at 5:12 PM UTC