"conceits" poems
Fashion’s symbolic sensuality draws eyes, stir passions and maybe even resentments! =]
Of course, maybe you’re above worldly conceits, above fashion. YOU, go through life as unaware as sinless Adam and you’re excessively handsome, or pretty, obviously.
But for the rest of us - fashion is the medium of our beauty and God created Paris for fashion.
We’re pretending we’ve come to Paris (our immediate, pandemic safety-pod-family) for a family reunion - but REALLY, we’re on safari - a freshmen, college-wear, “back to school,” ensemble hunt (for meeeeeeeeeeee!).
Step 1 (there’s only 1 step) - go to the Rue Saint-Honoré.
This year, I like-like Anna Molinari - most of the ready-to-wear daily-trash I snapped-up is hers - all hers. It didn’t start out that way - but she sould me on an uncharted course at first sight.
Other designers seem to be pushing old-lady-looking floral prints this season. Eeuw! Why?? DIAF.
My gran-mère (grandmother) told me - 6 days ago - as she attempted to tame my run-away hair: “You need to be unpredictable, petite beauté, not some comely young automaton. Then everyone will find you interesting and watch to see what you do next.”
Thank you, gran-mère - I’ll settle for looking interesting any time.
Jul 30, 2021
Jul 30, 2021 at 8:42 AM UTC
I now delight
In spite
Of the might
And the right
Of classic tradition,
In writing
And reciting
Straight ahead,
Without let or omission,
Just any little rhyme
In any little time
That runs in my head;
Because, I’ve said,
My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed
Like Prussian soldiers on parade
That march,
Stiff as starch,
Foot to foot,
Boot to boot,
Blade to blade,
Button to button,
Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.
No! No!
My rhymes must go
Turn ’ee, twist ’ee,
Twinkling, frosty,
Will-o’-the-wisp-like, misty;
Rhymes I will make
Like Keats and Blake
And Christina Rossetti,
With run and ripple and shake.
How pretty
To take
A merry little rhyme
In a jolly little time
And poke it,
And choke it,
Change it, arrange it,
Straight-lace it, deface it,
Pleat it with pleats,
Sheet it with sheets
Of empty conceits,
And chop and chew,
And hack and hew,
And weld it into a uniform stanza,
And evolve a neat,
Complacent, complete,
Academic extravaganza!
3.1k
As these forlorn cadences await- unfold
To compose a disbanded vow
Yielding unto harrows of gates untold
Charms death to disdainful plow
Death is plowed to a forgiving halt
While silver moonlight and whiskey dances remain
Glittering gold in this crimson vault-
Feeble souls conjure grace as graceless minds abstain
Counterfeit conceits ravish this open cellar
As the night’s last dance ceases to a disgraceful plea
The dweller’s disdain is akin to my killer
And heaven yields blood to salt the earth for thee
Come away now with your anguishing defeats
Seek not a jagged spike as the heaven’s conspire and wake
Glory and gold may turn us black as deceit
But deception admonishes the dancers in their quake
Spellbound nuances of this reality await at every turn
Mourning and fighting the finality of this grave
Orchestrated knives are rosined like honey, beckoning our blood to burn
At last, a burning reckoning comes to ravage the brave
But refrain, oh killer- host of this crimson vault
Enlist a memoir for our sins
Recalling the pieties of our gracious faults,
Enough to make this blood go thin.
Oct 15, 2018
Oct 15, 2018 at 9:08 PM UTC
As you came from the holy land
Of Walsingham,
Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came?
“How shall I know your true love,
That have met many one,
I went to the holy land,
That have come, that have gone?”
She is neither white, nor brown,
But as the heavens fair;
There is none hath a form so divine
In the earth, or the air.
“Such a one did I meet, good sir,
Such an angelic face,
Who like a queen, like a nymph, did appear
By her gait, by her grace.”
She hath left me here all alone,
All alone, as unknown,
Who sometimes did me lead with herself,
And me loved as her own.
“What’s the cause that she leaves you alone,
And a new way doth take,
Who loved you once as her own,
And her joy did you make?”
I have lov’d her all my youth;
But now old, as you see,
Love likes not the falling fruit
From the withered tree.
Know that Love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past;
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.
His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy:
He is won with a world of despair,
And is lost with a toy.
Of womenkind such indeed is the love,
Or the word love abus’d,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excus’d.
But true love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning,
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.
2.4k
Life’s an upward struggle, and it makes it so much rougher
when the ladder you find yourself climbing is beset by lonely weather.
When every other rung is off doing other things,
the solitude and altitude bring to mind desolation
and the emptiness that brings.
No matter the genius emanating from ivory minds,
the smartest man among us often finds
that brilliance unfiltered clogs up the system,
when others must consume the lonely perfume
of conceits kept alone,
while the common thoughts stay collected
like so many sheep in a pen that’s separated
from self-same lonely thoughts,
that genius oft encounters,
left only amongst the happiness
that fills up life’s happy coffers.
So it goes that lofty ideals become frostbitten
by snowcapped mountains of emptiness.
Others seek the heights together only during pleasant weather,
while those who trounce through snow-packed trails
must brave the climes alone tempted only by fate,
to descend to summits more frequent
than the peaks of accomplishment.
Gangrenous lips cannot utter
the chilled revelations of those left above too long.
So it is left to those below,
not inferior from the altitude,
just more likely acclimated to the difficult, dull journey
of those who spare pristine slopes
for the sullied, muddied slush on the tourist trails below.
Sep 21, 2012
Sep 21, 2012 at 2:49 AM UTC
What I have is a pitch
angled at nothing
and I envy the limber crowd of bees,
and I envy the spider’s easy meal.
The low hum of a wash cycle
competes with, then dislodges my dirge,
gradually builds a golden,
natural looking wan expression.
Diffident? Go out and meander
content to accept the indifference of meaning.
This walk is not a protest.
This work was only ever play.
Suitable for all skin types
our explanations can’t help themselves,
run like British accents on trade
and explain away any need for help.
Non-streaking conceits
you know best how much you are worth.
Oct 23, 2016
Oct 23, 2016 at 9:02 AM UTC
Come softly
silver rain, come
softly now my thoughts,
heavy as October's reddest hue
in hours shed these patched conceits
of dry leaves, curled
along the Summer road,
become some vast appalling wilderness...
Your hands, an Autumn dream,
cast a thick red sap
upon the swollen planes of my body,
crouch in a stealth pathos
of grey leopard cells,
as they well, wild with faith
and thirsty prayer...
Come away
from these stale Summer breads,
for your kisses
are a much softer fate
than wisdom, come
the ease of rain, softly
silver rain...
Stay the solemn night
with leaves, bedeck
my perilous flesh,
let it ascend
its grey latitudes
in blizzards of dogwood,
kindling songs on paperchains...
My hands,
string an alphabet
of silence, tied
by hours of rope,
inviolate, palms
clasped to glass, two
hummingbirds, quiet...
Stilled, joined, unbind
to close into fists, come Autumn
the season of bearing,
the rich red earth darkens and drinks
our tears, and now, never
the ease of rain, falling,
come softly,
softly silver rain....
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 4:15 PM UTC
#***they hide their sadness differently
each filling their emptiness with
never ending
waves of poor choices and
escalating consequences
he will never find relief in memories
of better times of kind words of moments shared under the moon on a hill where time and again they danced in and out of each other
she will never find relief in a bottle or a twisted piece of cellophane chasing the ghost of better times of kind words of moments shared when their souls and bodies were bare and there were no conceits or pretensions or sarcasms
of a time when they were the world
and the world was them
so they continue to chase
their relief in the wrong directions
when they both know that the
solution is asking to be found
So instead they'll forever carve each other's
names into their
very last
bare
inch of bone***#
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 11:11 AM UTC
No treaty is negotiable with the eager viral assassin.
Doubt the truth of gossip. What's sadder than the unreasonable sucker?
Tribal outcries and worldly conceits are not impenetrable refuges.
May you all be sheltered and safe and may modern alchemy protect you.
May you have what you need and be happy.
We will rise or fall together.
Aug 26, 2021
Aug 26, 2021 at 5:50 PM UTC
To God our strength sing loud, and clear,
Sing loud to God our King,
To Jacobs God, that all may hear
Loud acclamations ring.
Prepare a Hymn, prepare a Song
The Timbrel hither bring
The cheerfull Psaltry bring along
And Harp with pleasant string.
Blow, as is wont, in the new Moon
With Trumpets lofty sound,
Th’appointed time, the day wheron
Our solemn Feast comes round.
This was a Statute giv’n of old
For Israel to observe
A Law of Jacobs God, to hold
From whence they might not swerve.
This he a Testimony ordain’d
In Joseph, not to change,
When as he pass’d through Aegypt land;
The Tongue I heard, was strange.
From burden, and from slavish toyle
I set his shoulder free;
His hands from pots, and mirie soyle
Deliver’d were by me.
When trouble did thee sore assaile,
On me then didst thou call,
And I to free thee did not faile,
And led thee out of thrall.
I answer’d thee in *thunder deep *Be Sether ragnam.
With clouds encompass’d round;
I tri’d thee at the water steep
Of Meriba renown’d.
Hear O my people, heark’n well,
I testifie to thee
Thou antient flock of Israel,
If thou wilt list to mee,
Through out the land of thy abode
No alien God shall be
Nor shalt thou to a forein God
In honour bend thy knee.
I am the Lord thy God which brought
Thee out of Aegypt land
Ask large enough, and I, besought,
Will grant thy full demand.
And yet my people would not hear,
Nor hearken to my voice;
And Israel whom I lov’d so dear
Mislik’d me for his choice.
Then did I leave them to their will
And to their wandring mind;
Their own conceits they follow’d still
Their own devises blind
O that my people would be wise
To serve me all their daies,
And O that Israel would advise
To walk my righteous waies.
Then would I soon bring down their foes
That now so proudly rise,
And turn my hand against all those
That are their enemies.
Who hate the Lord should then be fain
To bow to him and bend,
But they, His should remain,
Their time should have no end.
And he would free them from the shock
With flower of finest wheat,
And satisfie them from the rock
With Honey for their Meat.
1.5k
Come softly
silver rain, come
softly now my thoughts,
heavy as September's reddest hue
in hours shed these patched conceits
of dry leaves, curled
along the Summer road,
become some vast appalling wilderness,
your hands, an Autumn dream,
casts a thick red sap
upon the swollen planes of my body,
crouched in a stealth pathos
of grey leopard cells,
as they well, wild with faith
and thirsty prayer,
come away
from these stale Summer breads,
for your kisses
are a much softer fate
than wisdom, come
the ease of rain, softly
silver rain,
stay the solemn night
with leaves, bedeck
my perilous flesh,
let it ascend
its grey latitudes
in blizzards of dogwood,
kindling songs on paperchains
my hands,
string an alphabet
of silence, tied
by hours of rope,
inviolate, palms
clasped to glass, two
hummingbirds, quiet
stilled,joined,unbind
to close into fists, come Autumn
the season of bearing,
the rich red earth darkens and drinks
our tears, and now, never
the ease of rain, falling,
come softly, softly silver rain....
Jan 9, 2013
Jan 9, 2013 at 11:51 AM UTC
you ask if I will not write
a love song for you
if I will not sing of true love
and your beauty and tenderness;
you ask if I will not
hold out the stars to you
and sing of fictions like the soul
and the moon's sway over our eternal beings;
no, sweetheart -
I will not gather roses from the verse of centuries
and I will not hold out to you the songs of yore
and thoughts and conceits repeated
until the very lies have become the truth -
but of true love always I shall sing for you
O sweetheart mine who in my company endures
ordinary words and no stardust rhetoric;
O sweet and innocent love
a true love song I sing always for you;
inherited verses and worn-out conventions
I renounce before you;
and in my song
there are no
hand-me-down ways in love and passed-on ideas
no hyperbole and no sweet lies and fantasies
but I sing a true song of love
a true song of love I sing for you -
O beloved mine who has to do
without the routine verses
*there is desire
and there is the flesh
there is nature
and there are the compulsive drives
and there are you and I
and the life given us these years*
and so I sing my true love song for you
sweetest beloved;
you dearest beloved
who endures my ordinary words
for you I sing,
O you so cherished and much beloved,
my true love song
always for you
who have to do
without the routine verses
Oct 19, 2010
Oct 19, 2010 at 1:03 AM UTC
do you know how many times i've had to suffer through the same tired metaphors over and over and over again.
put down your tears and your stars
and your cigarettes and your coffee
and your waves and your skies
and your hearts and your bruises
and pick up your pen and write
something worth living for god **** it.
because i haven't read a poem from the heart in years
and all your elaborate conceits and sadness and promises
and "i love you"s and lips and dreams
are getting on my ******* nerves.
rage against the stereotypes and conventions and
rage against Petrarchan and Romantic and
Post ******* Modern love.
Don't write something because you feel like it.
Write something because you would explode if you didnt
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 5:34 AM UTC
i think that writers have a hard time loving people
because we fall in love more often with words
than we do with the people w beating hearts standing before us.
"just remember that the way you think about someone is the way that they actually are."
we fall in love with metaphors and similes and conceits.
we fall in love with the idea that we're the hopeless romantic
and that they're our savior.
but the paper has its limits.
and one day,
our pen will run out of ink.
our pencil will be out of lead,
and our hands will have cramped so bad
that we'd probably believe that we'd have carpel tunnel.
and what would we be left?
heartbreak.
because we'd be left to fall in love with nothing but
smudged lines, faded words, and crumpled up papers.
Apr 17, 2015
Apr 17, 2015 at 1:42 AM UTC
Searching through my circumcised conceits
ransacking allegorical nature
a more outlandish metaphor
alluding to your eyes glistening,
Though Shakespeare, were he to hear,
would revolve over over again
in his graves, may he feel free
to make jokes of.
I say with poetic assertion
confidence, no other allusion
would come closer to truth,
to my purpose, than me saying,
your eyes contain the sparkle of ten million diamonds:
they are far
far brighter than any sun.
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 4:02 PM UTC
Life passes by
Moment by moment
Each minute a grain of sand
In a ceaseless flow inside
This biological hourglass
Time has this peculiarity:
This irreversible absurdity
That to crave for more time
Becomes one's slow undoing
Sagging skin, unsightly wrinkles
Bones turn brittle, breaking
Muscles ****** out of their strength
Atrophied
Eyes failing, perpetual darkness
And the self succumbs to the lull
Of oblivion
The mind: no longer, extinguished
What's left is a husk of what once was
A human being.
Hope then becomes a beacon, a torch
In the middle of a starless night
A burning, warm sense of certainty
Hope, or that stubborn illusion
That happiness is one's lot in life
But time silently persists
Eroding foundations, narratives
Dismantling falsity
Uprooting grand, elaborate conceits
Blind and merciless
Uncaring towards puny human desires
Hope's demise.
Life: a futile struggle against time.
To what end?
Dec 15, 2020
Dec 15, 2020 at 3:57 AM UTC
What makes a good poem?
Is it the rhythm? The structure? The carefully placed similes like dog treats and the restricted use of rhetorical questions?
Oh.
If that's the case,
I think I failed the test.
Oh please! Don't leave! Let me try this again!
(A cough to clear the throat)
Ha-HEM.
When one writes iambic pentameter
Doth that make his good prose the worthier then?
...No?
If I write a witty couplet in a rhyme
Does that make this utter **** more worth your time?
Have I got the tempo right?
I need an exclamatory tone!
Rhyming feels better somehow
But it doesn't make trombone.
My jittery jilted stream-of-consciousness different-line-length punctuation-less word-vomit onto a page-
Pause for breath-
Can never match the likes of Donne or Keats;
But I've bled my soul and fire onto this page
And surely, that is worth more than conceits?
Oct 1, 2017
Oct 1, 2017 at 6:11 PM UTC
If words crept up on you
As you lay silent but awake
I wonder what you'd say with them
And if you'd speak of me
Of the way I hold myself when I'm hurt
Arms wrapped around my ribcage
And how you wish your arms could take their place
And with all of your heart that nothing may ever harm me
And by what name would you call me
With my own or as the benefactor of yours
In cursive or in your sloppy print
That's scattered amongst my pockets
Would you love me in conceits and
In ways you'll never speak of me out loud
And if the words gave you their hearts like I did
Maybe you would at least take them
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 1:27 PM UTC
Two men were talking to God you might even say they were praying both askeded for the same gift; vulgarly known as filth lucre-money. Gods told them that they each could have their prayer answered but they would have to decide whether they would put their faith in luck or merit. The First said I am a democratic man I hardly can bear to to think I am better than any other so my choice is luck. The second said well it hardly seems right that an undeserving man should be disproportionately rewarded,no that is not at all just. I will put my faith in merit. The gift was given to each and each retained his own conceits but when the wind from God blew and nothing remained of either of their fortunes All is Vanity- Nevertheless for Love' sake I shall fear the Lord who gives me peace.
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 12:23 PM UTC
Searching through my circumcised conceits
ransacking allegorical nature
for a more outlandish metaphor
alluding to your eyes glistening,
Though Shakespeare, were he to hear,
would revolve over over again
in his graves, may he feel free
to make jokes of.
I say with poetic assertion,
confidence, no other allusion
would come closer to truth,
to my purpose, than me saying,
your eyes contain the sparkle of ten million diamonds:
they are far
far brighter than any sun.
May 22, 2016
May 22, 2016 at 11:09 AM UTC
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to **** one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
May 13, 2015
May 13, 2015 at 11:09 PM UTC
“When will they ever learn?” - Bob Dylan
Secure in the golden cradle
Of youth, we are schooled to sense
Just who we are and might become
Then tempests toss us seaward –
Reeling in crests and troughs of fear -
Adrift, abandoned and lost -
Hung between heritage and revolution.
Tempers roil, ignite, explode
Sabers are rattled then swung
In heated ****** of lethal madness.
When will we ever learn?
And yet our sun-washed globe spins on -
Impervious to our juvenile conceits
In time wash ashore with new resolve
To rebuild bridges - vessels - public works.
Nations rebound and halls resound
With noble and inspiring speeches
To remind us who we are
And who we might become.
All seems well again until
Time's sermons are flung aside
and hell returns to lacerate our sphere.
When will we ever learn?
When is never soon enough.
Sep 13, 2023
Sep 13, 2023 at 3:09 PM UTC
A flush creeps to my cheeks, it's been weeks and weeks now. I'm tired of these vicious conceits, continuous defeat as we struggle over who gets to inevitably keep their sanity... her apparently as she slashes my name again and again, once twice thrice called her a friend now. It's all over, supposedly no animosity any more, can't call her a two faced evil... person, thats not civil or nice, it's not me am I right? What's this stinging feeling in my eyes, I can't, I don't know just make this emptiness stop, a pit forming in my stomach and as I rise to the top I could just drop my self into it, all the jokes, all the smiles, all the confidence I never had anyway disappears before it was here even for a day. Big girls don't cry, but then again the songs lie, I sit here surrounded by people who judge the sound of my tears hitting plastic, they think it's fantastic to see a guy like me brought to there level. Big guy, just means another foot to fly as I fall from the sky, after being dropped from so high. Get it together Jack you're not having a panic attack. You're not anxious. You're not depressed. Even if you were no one would be impressed by your pain. Just pick yourself up, roll a *** pack your bag and run home. And start it all over again.
Dec 23, 2018
Dec 23, 2018 at 8:38 PM UTC