"concentric" poems
The way Sunday sits in its secret hideaway paradise
at the end of the week
It's legs carelessly kicking at the lake,
with wet bare feet
making concentric circles in the water with its toes
That's how you make me feel.
Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 12:55 AM UTC
My baby moves in jumps and flutters inside me,
like the barn swallows that make nests
of dirt and twigs outside the restaurant.
Yesterday they disappeared
and I learned that a maintenance man came and hosed them down.
Tragic, he said.
But necessary.
Too much bird ****
When I got pregnant
it felt like waking up at the top of a roller coaster.
And then an engagement.
Somehow
this is how my life is going
and somehow it does not feel like cliche.
Ask as many what-ifs as you want
but there is just a single trajectory.
Even though you have to fall asleep one day
before waking in the next.
Moving through concentric circles and trying to find the center.
Biology is happening
in a part of me that I am still getting to know.
Kaleidoscoping.
She was once the size of a grape
but now I read she can blink her eyelids.
She is also not like the barn swallows.
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 7:00 PM UTC
She is the vindictive snow
Beautiful, cold causing her chilling touch to leave me numb
She creates an overload of dopamine for me
But like I said she left me numb
She compressed limerence upon me
The concentric feelings I have for her linger
This contours her opaque heart
Leaving her pliable words lay rendering in my mind
She applies this solvent to it leaving me broken
Forlorn she left me
Yet, the tactile, numbing sensation keeps me going
For she is the one I love
Causing our hearts to be diptych artwork off our hinges.
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015 at 12:02 AM UTC
In this trigonometric love equation
You're my arcsin,
You're my special angle,
Secretly placed
In that unit circle of feelings.
You may arrange my major arcs and diameters
Inside of it
Perfectly triangular,
Love will always have
The same ratio pi.
Our equation of love
Is seemingly incompatible.
It has philosophical numbers becoming
Common geometric shapes
Of love itself
Like hidden spheres
In triangles,
But in real terms of graphing
Our parallel lines of life
Went on forever not crossing at any point
Of this imperfect world.
Our love is, in fact,
A complex system of equations
With the same set of three unknowns
Searching their own values
It has a narrative statement.
You're my C.
You're mister C,
From c'telzing
From caleptikide
And from cataguerrillaism,
In this beautiful madness of love.
You know, our love is getting old
In concentric circles,
Those circles of time.
Extrapolate it to infinity, sweetheart,
You may be my semi-infinity
Until the end of the time,
That semi-infinity,
In which I lose myself
From time to time
Each time coming
From the same unique star
As that already existent
In an old Romanian novel,
Which is called
Lorelei.
Jan 17, 2012
Jan 17, 2012 at 1:47 PM UTC
in the river of good company
***I dedicate this poem to
Mr. Harlon Rivers,
one of the best poets (here)
and from his good company,
i could drink all day and
never be quenched***
~
Preface
sometime, the heart wants it wants,
denial, temporarily from your vocabulary, excised
sometimes, beauty keelhauls you, gets you
awestruck inspired, then arrogance overcomes
the brilliance of common sense and you go ahead and
mess with perfection despite every sensor flashing
uh oh, duh, oh no, fool on the premises, lockdown needed!
do believe this condition can be found in the medical books
under I, for Inspiration, Incantation, or S for Stupidifacation
my heart wants to write a poem,
cause I was a witness, sitting twenty feet
from the heavenly crime scene,
and every intonation swept my brain into that secret place,
when I heard KD Lang singing "The Valley"^
~~~
in the river of good company
simple sentiment but good god
all I ever wanted and so oft lacked
such was my fate, one I made,
had plenty good words for boon companions,
the occasional touch of a woman rippling waves
cross my face, a love lapping slapping
of concentric pebble rings,
till like most good things
gone good goes bad,
it just happens to evaporate and
you think someday, maybe,
you will walk again in good company
the brain says quit right here
but the heart brooks no damning tantrum of sanity imposition,
for those handful of deepest, not quite six feet under
palpitations of insensible, cutting glimpses of that word I hate so,
memories,
of when
you walked in good company
men women no different - it is that heated aura
tween bodies that confirms that you are once again
a human being, just a being, temporarily
enhanced, elevated, by good company
so go ahead sweet talks ya, that devil id a/k/a desire, says -
one more for the road can't hurt ya,
write that poem -
and perhaps one good man, glory hallelujah, a good woman,
will read it and you can stop weeping you idiot,
do it so you will be back, nuttier but nurtured,
drinking from the river of good company,
mouthing not even dare whispering,
satisfied satiated, loving and loved
~
all reposts greatly and grateful appreciated!
4/2/17 9:24am
Apr 2, 2017
Apr 2, 2017 at 9:27 AM UTC
The still explosions on the rocks,
the lichens, grow
by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.
They have arranged
to meet the rings around the moon, although
within our memories they have not changed.
And since the heavens will attend
as long on us,
you've been, dear friend,
precipitate and pragmatical;
and look what happens. For Time is
nothing if not amenable.
The shooting stars in your black hair
in bright formation
are flocking where,
so straight, so soon?
--Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,
battered and shiny like the moon.
4.2k
As a maddened beast it charges
Emanating with expanse
Brute techtonic plate reaction
From the epicentre’s stance.
Huge concentric rings diverge
Expanding at horrific rate
Black, titanic, towering waters
Ploughing to a deadly fate.
*Kneeling in her bed of roses
Pollinating bees abound,
Morning sunbeams kiss her shoulders
Peaceful garden bliss surrounds.*
Surging to the coastal shelf
The black gigantis rears on high
Claws toward the placid beach
Seabirds scatter to the sky.
Tide receds to bare the reef
Stranded mackerel whitely leap,
Enormously the massive wave
Attacks the land and they who sleep.
Death comes fast to they who loiter
Violence in the tangled purge,
Massive pressures, crushing debris
Broken buildings in the surge.
Ships and cars are tossed asunder
Inexorably it slams
Far inland to slay those fleeing
Locked in highway traffic jams.
*Strange roar at the garden wall
Terrified, she finds her feet,
Roses, bees, sweet girl engulfed
As black entombedment swamps the street.*
Far inland the chaos flows
Wreaking death's destructive bands,
Halted now by highland hills
Where souls in horror, wring their hands.
Slow retraction leaving ruin
Desolation far and wide,
The smell of new death in the air,
Heartbreak in the countryside.
Marshalg
For Nippon
18 March 2011
Mar 17, 2011
Mar 17, 2011 at 4:44 PM UTC
There’s a dark grotto
Under the sea
With shelves and shelves
Of bottles
Clear, glass bottles
All of my secrets
A carefully watched castle
The middle of a concentric series of impassable walls
Surrounded by a forest of kelp
With razor-sharp teeth
And then the narwhals
The narwhal guards
Armed to the teeth with halibut-slicing knives
Their three-meter horns
Gleaming in the moonlight
Guarding
All of my secrets
Skeletons, trespassers of yore,
Strewn about the seafloor
Bones picked clean
By the scavenging *****
No one can enter
No one can leave
The grotto with the shelves
Shelves and shelves of clear, glass bottles
All of my secrets
But as for the *****
For the first time in centuries
The sunlight warms the waters
Melts the kelp
Kisses the narwhals
Buries the bones and torments the scavengers
Clearing away the darkness
A nonstop route through the castle
Protecting
All of my secrets
The tendrils of photons creep along
Wary
Ready for a fight
The grotto growls menacingly
Unguarded
For the first time in centuries
But upon the first touch -
Light meets stone -
The sea shudders
Ecstasy
And in repayment for salvation
Out come the bottles
Floating to the surface
Bathing in the light
All of my secrets
May 19, 2010
May 19, 2010 at 3:20 PM UTC
CECI N'EST PAS UNE ORANGE
A Parisian orange
lay bang in the middle of the street.
I couldn't have avoided it
this orange of all oranges
lost & stranded
but still as
big & bold & bright
as a new found sun
in an unknown solar system.
It invisible to all
bicycles cars and feet.
A cat gave it
a cursory glance.
The soundtrack of Paris
happening just off stage.
Now everyone had vanished
except me & this orange.
Somehow it found
its way to my head
& unraveled itself
in a concentric spiral
a swirl of orange peel
& white pith
like a Can-Can
dancer's skirt.
I ate it.
Oblivious
to everything else
my first
French
orange.
A Parisian orange
lay bang in the middle of the street.
I couldn't have avoided it
this orange of all oranges
lost & stranded
but still as
big & bold & bright
as a new found sun
in an unknown solar system.
It invisible to all
bicycles cars and feet.
A cat gave it
a cursory glance.
The soundtrack of Paris
happening just off stage.
Now everyone had vanished
except me & this orange.
Somehow it found
its way to my head
& unraveled itself
in a concentric spiral
a swirl of orange peel
& white pith
like a Can-Can
dancer's skirt.
I ate it.
Oblivious
to everything else
my first
French
orange.
Sep 7, 2019
Sep 7, 2019 at 5:04 PM UTC
The rooster swivels on its axis returning
coarse wind into the pyre of mad, mad tongues
raving alongside charred ivory. Lifted by sorry hands
from dying embers’ embrace and eased with foreign pity,
ceremoniously, into a cardboard crate wheeled against
the traffic, stumbling backwards through yellow canvases,
between my family dressed in black, to dress the void (deck),
mourners spitting soda into their cups, as word paddle upstream,
onto a thin futon within four walls stained with unfinished ghosts.
The doctor removes the white shroud like God coaxing pink light
on the first day and wine oozes through elastic veins to the far corners of my skin thin ventricular walls. One crack, in the doors and in my chest, paramedics in white blur in, heel first,
Pan-island couriers on reverse gear to the corner
of a numbered street, where I am delivered like a gladiator
thrown into the arena of nosy gazes, with the urgency of
hens clucking away from premeditated slaughter:
deep Christmas red on the tessellated parking lot.
Clumsy thumbs dialing 599, I moan inwardly
to the concentric circles of strangers retreating, erasing
me from cell-phone cameras. Then like a flip animation I
snap backwards, up 21 floors,
pause for about an hour on the ledge before smashing
backwards, back down, past kids scratching graffiti off the cement
and growing cigarettes in their mouths. The rain ascends and I take
wet cash from the driver while I fidget on the leather and throw up
mediocre coffee into my cup. I dig into my throat and return the bread
to its plastic bag and when the cab stops I fall left out onto another parking lot,
moonwalk up the stairs to where I unwrite my name in the
annals of failure and
shove the Fs of my past back
then
I take the bus instead.
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 3:24 AM UTC
Red chinstraps
Wet blood, slowly drying in the evening breeze
Folded into wells of clouded waves with vague concentric origin
Closer, a flattened helmet, orange ochre blazing
Sun sinking, stars chasing
Warrior's stratified locks wisp out to vanishing points
Freckles of sputtered bronze
Slowly becoming red
Slowly becoming an omen
Foreshadowing tears to be wept
Horses that lay silent
On the eastern Ural Steepe
Nov 21, 2021
Nov 21, 2021 at 9:21 PM UTC
*Life without the boundaries
Expands from now and beyond
Concentric circles of consciousness
Waves that binds with cosmic reverberation
Creating intricate patterns of responsiveness
Mind holds the multitude of thoughts
Where they essay a beautiful narrative
You, the protagonist, mirrored in different light*
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 11:41 PM UTC
Fingers dipped in purple powders
Fushia gold my makeup
Black skintight latex suit with neon circles
How my outfit is made up
Three rings around my waist
Intersecting, two vertical, one on the horizon
The circles glow with noble gases
Radioactive, after all, I'm an alien
Perfect spheres and concentric rings
Are trending, so I have read
I balance on stacked circles, my six inch latex heels
And floating circles surround the pair of buns on my head
My bones poke through my latex,
Anorexia won't stop my passions
I may not be the body type you want, but I'm the body type you have
And I still enjoy the fashions
Feb 29, 2020
Feb 29, 2020 at 2:38 PM UTC
Shards of sail staple sky to sea as fingernail-thin boats lean in to the horizon.
The surge of surf converses constantly with the silent shore, urging its message upon the oblivious beach.
My children scramble on the man-made groyne, a facsimile of wild rock, in which they find caves 'with a proper rock on top' (Bea) and 'a hundred miles deep' (Willem).
We are here on bikes, salt wind in our hair, and my *** slowly absorbing moisture from the almost-dry sand as they unburden their youth upon the rocky playground.
And then come the treasures.
A flat shell the size of my palm and worn pearlescent smooth.
A fossil pebble of concentric ingrained ripples.
'Something amazing Mummy,' comes the cry. 'You have to see this stone; the colour of Coca Cola,' shouts my boy.
More treasures emerge and are grafted on to the sandy pile.
Quartz-like lumps and a mussel entangled with tiny seaweed strands and miniature white shells, like micro leaves and hints of feta in a fancy restaurant.
The boy wears welly boots, no socks, and a plastic medal around his neck. 'Batman, Batman, Batman,' comes the cry, while Bea determinedly scans heaven and Earth for jewels to stud her imagination.
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 11:03 AM UTC
Bells overbrim with sound
And spread from cupolas
Out through the shaking air
Endless unbreaking circles
Cool and clear as water.
A stone dropped in the water
Opens the lips of the pool
And starts the unovertaking
Rings, till the pool is full
Of waves as the air of bells.
The deep-sea bell of sleep
Under the pool of the mind
Flowers in concentric circles
Of annihilation till
Both sight and sound die out,
Both pool and bells are quelled.
2.2k
How many could be calling?
Eitherwise, it is exausting
To be held by own accountability.
Ability for account; a mass
Of those counted. Weigh creaks
On these levers over my eyes.
A lover in disguise lies
The warmth of this weight.
Lazy and laconic to confuse
The schizophrenic.
Lord I hope these are my own-
If I myself am not the sovereign-
Elaborate equations voiced
From character calculations.
Clacking their sums
In my sincere consideration.
We all have that second or so thought to reach concentric clarity.
When I sing or spiel the art of it, easier to make a monster of me.
Jan 14, 2013
Jan 14, 2013 at 5:43 AM UTC
The next evening,
when the showers came,
I saw countless ripples on the surface of the lake,
each running in concentric circles
against the outward pushing circles of those around…
And when the rain intensified,
I saw the ripples dancing themselves into some frenzy,
pushing themselves harder against one another,
harder against one another...
And he said:
Only the drop not with the ripples
know the depth and spread of the lake.
Alone, that night, long after the rain had gone,
I found not a speck of the real
reflected on the lake.
Neither the stars, nor the moon.
Everything went out of purpose
into a slithering, twisting, rolling,
dance of the unreal, as the wind continued to howl.
I waited for the ripples to dance out their dance.
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 7:41 PM UTC
don’t kiss and tell,
meaning
do kiss, go crazy, let passion rule, give in, take out,
meaning
kiss but don’t tell
yet,
the real telling is in the kissing
where your heart gives way,
avalanches into frenzied chain of signal fires,
smoked, clouded eyes, with only one exception made;
the shining, sheer veil see-through when
the other is on the room and the green spring coverlet felled,
all to see the glow, see all the the blush,
the pretense, aversion skins natural makeup, a liberty beacon
laughing, how it cannot be hid for what’s inside
climbs so fast, blushes blue blood redder, the inside reaction reagent,
the weakening composure, the intense beating from heart to head,
the joyous tearing, the silent swearing, the stupid grinning,
the step skipping, the happy dance springing spontaneous,
no control, might as well just let it go biology in chemistry class
all these tells that you have kissed beyond reason,
these hidden kisses might as well be on
billboards on the highway into town,
a P.A. announcement in high school,
a hearty button attached to your backpack,
the incessant text checking, all dogs nighttime barking all day
go ahead kiss and tell
go ahead tell and kiss harder,
in the kisses, a million tellings
every body part red swelling,
the tearing of every body part,
concentric circles extended from a pebbled heart
~
Apr 25, 2019
Apr 25, 2019 at 5:56 PM UTC
Whether storms are all numbered, counted, and expelled from heaven's manufacture as sensational, furious strands of wind and rain, who can say? As they arrive, however, it is nonetheless clear that they arrive as effects to sets of circumstances.
I sat up straight as an arrow, freshly awakened from a stirring dream of madness as the latest one arrived, watching the black clouds like mighty arms, struggling and arguing against the trees outside my bedroom window. I had been torn by an invisible hand clutching me by the throat, snatching me from the murk of an ephemeral bedroom.
Engulfed in unsatiated fear, powerless to convulse even the tiniest flesh patch or creak a bone, my body was wrapped in only a gray silken **** cloth. As I lay awake, speechless, thunderbolts cracked.
As I was rendered helpless to petrification, I was surrounded by strike after strike, a confounding series of white bolts striking seven times in each place, following a path of concentric circles around my small bed.
I struggled to move, feeling a moving static across my body like jellyfish stings from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, as I felt the cold chill from each bolt setting my face into a freezing strangulation.
I was pulled away. I faded away from the smoking holes surrounding the bed, the sub-zero chill outside and the torturous heat of fear and arrhythmia pumping spews and spurts through my arteries inside, and I was left to wander in my own fantasia as I stared up to the ceiling above me in my real bed, daydreaming of its meaning in epistomological fashion.
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 4:03 PM UTC
these chandeliers were home to roses, now fallen petals on this abandoned courtyard
short handed late traced steps and short lived excitement, we are concentric beings
filled with the same steadfast frame of mind, brick by unnerving bricks tower over
burnt down villages, this love found in fairytales doesn't truly exist in real life
there's a hot wired circuit around my blighted mind, suffering from dementia,
or was the diagnosis faith in this fantasy world i created with vivid metaphors
and words i cannot pronounce, just to get across the fact that i believe in this type
of coping mechanism, that this silence is the most clearest my mind's ever been
at the lowest level of the food chain is where i sit, waiting to be swallowed
and spit out into a world with the core being torrid obsidian matching the
color of the asphalt where i once laid and the color of people's hearts
i've met over the years, serendipity is nonexistant just like chivalry
although i really wish there was such a thing as chivalry in real life
- kra
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 4:10 AM UTC
docking on the fringe of a dry spot
the rain died in...
i set sail in solemn siroccos, fraught
with endive and lemons...
no chop. flat listing in the leaning theme
impervious to words lost
my ship dips in clean drink
and dark thought.
away, my anchor prods starboard
planks of salt wood...
clangs in a grog of lurching halt
raw ***** mauve tossed - and shriek blind.
a pennant of mock cause.
a scant curl of smoke, seized
in unseasonable Hypnos.
a whimsical Charybdis -
a thing i choke on.
i scoff
cough a terrible pen
my inkwell, topped off
with black pond,
quill qualms
of love's
dross.
the serenity of my tempest
and the skipping stone it cracked,
now, white sharks, prowling the yonder
of the nearby,
in debt to a far gone, yawning
rings,-
concentric to the naked eye, you clothe not.
lest the raiment be
the Emperor's
new lot.
A Stitch of Odyssey In Epic Fail...
to get more gone, but less lost
a journey of a single step
begins because... and
just because
you stop
stopping.
Feb 3, 2013
Feb 3, 2013 at 1:54 PM UTC
muse,
*she/her has no master, only a mastery;
she, comes compulsing, a physical pounding,
a throbbing impervious resistant to logic or medicine,
which is the so very ever, the peculiar throbbing
of a principled particular “present participle,”*
*write of compulsing is her mocking suggestion.*
*a presence, punishing urging, pas de choix, obey,
submission; write freely but not free, compose or
decompose; is there a difference, no, not, and so ordered,
demand surrendered, how? how? this taking and giving,
can a single act dichotomy be so fulfilling and so emptying?*
<>
wake daily to water canvas, the waves, dabs of paint
protruding, irritating. provoking yet presented silenced,
repetitiously calming, motioned framed within the
white edged sand, the bound-surround of the living painting.
eyes alight, eyes delight, this daily emergence unto
a tapestry devoid of human interference suggests
a differentiating reality; now I understand the how of a
world’s imperfections constituting, tooting its own perfectionism.
this is not lake water; no single flat stone skipping nor
a concentric rippling to a slow death; this is seaward-
bound, an oceans subservient tributary, contributory,
a river, bay, sound - precursors to a vast atlantic infinity.
this is metaphor; this a still life of the perpetuation metamorphosis.
<>
*the muse exhales; as do I subsequently; what difference?
none, she replies to herself, tween painting artist and
verbalizing poet, the un-still life creation, always, always,
different, the essence of diversity in a singularity sameness*
7:13 AM Thu Jul 29
2021
S. I. Sound
Jul 29, 2021
Jul 29, 2021 at 7:59 AM UTC
To sit upon this wooden chair
Before this plain white wall,
May seem, to you, to be quite odd
To me it does enthrall.
I take in all the vacant space
And let my eyes caress
The symmetry and peacefulness
…And I really must confess,
The nothingness before me
Draws me in, in such a way
As I wrap myself in plain, white wall
… my mind begins to play
From that tiny smudge of blue emerge
Kaleidescopes of clay
Which carouse across the vacant space
In a most artistic way,
In small concentric circles
In a patterned, frenzied style
They fill the background with mosaic
Of a gold and reddish tile,
With rooster tails of livid green
And dancing through the scene,
A spangled hand of aqua blue
Paints off a sequined theme.,
Some dancing naked maidens
Cavort pinkly in the pool
And a flight of silver satyrs
Scamper in and act the fool.
The roaring sound of raindrops,
The rush of welling tears,
There’s the thrill of my involvement
…and then “Ping” It disappears!
My plain white wall’s in front of me,
I’m sitting on that stool.
I sneak a peak, to check and see,
If someone’s being cruel.
My sister caught me out one day,
She roared with earthy glee
And pointed her fat finger
That girl made fun of me.
It’s really a small price to pay
To be a strange oddball.
I’d rather suffer this than leave
To watch ANOTHER wall.
I sit upon this wooden chair
Before this plain white wall,
May seem, to you, to be quite odd
To me it does enthrall…..
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
24 January 2008
Oct 20, 2009
Oct 20, 2009 at 8:43 PM UTC
*my rough and tattered edges like sea glass
smoothly rounded by her passions
relentlessly polished by intimate contact
with her welling water and earthy grit
the reality of her excites me
humbling any romantic doubt
dispelling any fantasy skepticism
instilling a will for the moment
she is energy in pure spherical form
encircling this scattered life
she holds for me a sense of place
a bookmark to poetic existence
just as bands bind magic barrel staves
as rainbows secretly circle underground
as concentric rings indicate growth
love will revolve even as it expands*
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 4:26 PM UTC
Circles of Peace,of careless abandon.
Circles of love,unadulterated agape.
Circles of sweet dreams and great intention.
Circles of brotherhood and kindred spirit
Circles of umbilical trust and faithful souls,
Circles of impactful influence
Circles,oh circles of camaraderie
Circles of joy,of gospel that gladdens,
Circles of brimful moments,
Circles of memorable times,
Concentric Circles of fulfillment,
In the middle thereof have I pitched my tent !
© Adeoye Favour I.
@Favwrites
@Favcreatives
Feb 11, 2020
Feb 11, 2020 at 6:45 PM UTC