"contrariwise" poems
The difference between you and her
(whom I to you did once prefer)
Is clear enough to settle:
She like a diamond shone, but you
Shine like an early drop of dew
Poised on a red rose petal.
The dew-drop carries in its eye
Mountain and forest, sea and sky,
With every change of weather;
Contrariwise, a diamond splits
The prospect into idle bits
That none can piece together
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Foreigners are people somewhere else,
Natives are people at home;
If the place you’re at
Is your habitat,
You’re a foreigner, say in Rome.
But the scales of Justice balance true,
And *** leads into tat,
So the man who’s at home
When he stays in Rome
Is abroad when he’s where you’re at.
When we leave the limits of the land in which
Our birth certificates sat us,
It does not mean
Just a change of scene,
But also a change of status.
The Frenchman with his fetching beard,
The Scot with his kilt and sporran,
One moment he
May a native be,
And the next may find him foreign.
There’s many a difference quickly found
Between the different races,
But the only essential
Differential
Is living different places.
Yet such is the pride of prideful man,
From Austrians to Australians,
That wherever he is,
He regards as his,
And the natives there, as aliens.
Oh, I’ll be friends if you’ll be friends,
The foreigner tells the native,
And we’ll work together for our common ends
Like a preposition and a dative.
If our common ends seem mostly mine,
Why not, you ignorant foreigner?
And the native replies
Contrariwise;
And hence, my dears, the coroner.
So mind your manners when a native, please,
And doubly when you visit
And between us all
A rapport may fall
Ecstatically exquisite.
One simple thought, if you have it pat,
Will eliminate the coroner:
You may be a native in your habitat,
But to foreigners you’re just a foreigner.
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~
*Salvation comes with a price--
Pried open doors,
choir songs of fingerdust
resurrecting goldrush,
and a pretty little
cromulent called whitewash.
New century martyrs
have risen up to burn books,
and quotes,
and tongues,
and every contrariwise thought,
--is this intuition or inquisition?
What ascends is trapped within
tenebrific clouds,
returning to barren ground
when it rains unholy prayers.
They don't crusade for you or me.
They contest for dominion and mastery.
Those who believe are mooncalf.
This torchlight of intolerance
sends out skyrockets,
and away it goes!
trending on your homepage:
Past generations
burning at the stake,
at the hands of sinners clothed as saints,
in cathedral oblivion,
dismembering their future
in the blood of their own children.
Amen?*
~
Mar 25, 2021
Mar 25, 2021 at 10:18 AM UTC
When Van Gogh cut off his ear
It was for reassurance that the rest of him could disappear
That illusion of ownership that nerves create
Should have faded with each baby tooth I lost
It didn't though, contrariwise I worried I would extend
Into roads or trees and then feel the tire's friction or the elm's blight
Empathy is a ***** of its own
I pray I never wake up with a Siamese twin
I'd have to care, lest we lapse into mutual sadomasochism
That hilarious territory of bored lovers
The Thalidomide kids might get a kick
out of feeling new arms attached to other people
but that's the exception that proves the rule
After the Vietnam war, some men believed Agent Orange
Had followed them home, alive in newly discovered nerves
Now what odd god must be behind that ****
Mengele often awoke from dreams sweating and sure
That his patients would learn a trick to generate biological anesthetics
He needed the feedback of sound to really understand the human body
“Prayer or pleading” he used to say with a wink to his bartender after work
Sometimes I worry that my nervous system
Might have a Mengelian agenda of its own
That I am woven into a potential torture chamber seems clear
but then I remember that I can always pull the tooth or cut off the ear
Aug 10, 2012
Aug 10, 2012 at 3:48 AM UTC
It never has occurred to me that people do not care.
I understand their reasoning and know it isn't fair
that no-one really wants a thing except things for one’s own,
that no-one wants to please you til you please them to the bone.
From this fact comes the heartache that we all must face sometimes,
though no one quite believes they’re not alone when anguish climbs.
There are, however, no-ones better than most ones out there,
who'll fain and fake a reason to assist and sooth despair.
It’s those who make the lonely world a worthwhile waste of age,
the ones who, when you’re insecure, give strength to turn the page.
This family, I've heard them called,
related or attained,
are those who wouldn’t be appalled
when your hands, red, were stained.
Contrariwise, some no-ones are much worse of ones than most,
they build up all your ego and they give you strength to boast.
Although you'll surely fancy them for giving such a gift,
they do so with malicious goals to set your mind adrift.
And once they’ve hooked your heart with hooks as sharp as hornets’ teeth,
they'll draw you closer with their charms and cunningly unsheathe.
It’s not a blade of iron or a blade to cut your skin,
but a blade made of desire that will pierce you from within;
a pin-point ***** that gives rise to a sudden heart-attack,
an ache inside that sets your mind and spirit far aback.
Love is how I’ve heard it said,
Unanswered, star-crossed, true;
they all exist to fill with dread
a slowly dying you.
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 5:09 AM UTC
The world's so queer, and yet you show surprise
to find him solid in the midday light.
He looks at you with strangely laughing eyes.
You told yourself you're sure to recognise
the green-clad arms, the ring upon the right;
the world's so queer, and yet you show surprise?
His name won't pass your lips. You know... those guys.
You know his name. At least you think you might.
He looks at you with strangely laughing eyes.
The happy folk? And after many tries
you force a smile, a single smile, polite.
"The world's so queer, and yet you show surprise...
You've seen me here before, contrariwise;
You can't pretend you don't recall the sight."
He looks at you with strangely laughing eyes.
(Your sister's outer clothing all of lies.)
(Your brother was a changeling in the night.)
The world's so queer, and yet you show surprise.
He looks at you with strangely laughing eyes.
May 23, 2010
May 23, 2010 at 6:15 PM UTC
Everything was ceased and now there's a limit, a border. I don't want borders,
you're infinite
imperfectly perfect, since it an excellence like yours
wouldn't be flawless, being so, because
it's imperfect and then concrete and
more the perfect things are real
more they don't seem so,
contrariwise, the perfect excellence can not be
true and enthrall us,
but it isn't like the defective imperfection
that appear us celestial.
Understand me
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 7:06 PM UTC
I don’t remember when I became friends with the rabbit.
It must have been when I was too young to know that
Rabbits aren’t supposed to talk or
Keep time with pocket watches.
I quite liked how the clocks spun backwards and the doorways shrunk.
I often laughed at the way colors swirled or
The funny way mirrors distorted images.
But only the rabbit and his friends understood.
Kids at school would laugh when I told them about my tea parties with no tea.
Apparently, the clocks didn’t spin backwards for them.
Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't.
And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would.
I learned to hide the fact that the sky was green and the grass was blue.
Picking my personality from my pocket, I became a walking mirror.
Yes, yes, the sky is blue and the grass is green and the clocks spin forwards and the mirrors are not silly and the colors do not swirl and the voices do not wondrously whisper in your ear.
The rabbit would try to console me. (For he was the only one who was not mad.)
I cried and cried and the more I cried the more the sky turned green.
For the first time I begged and pleaded that it would turn to blue. (But it never did.)
I quite liked the world until the rest of the world decided it didn’t like me.
Please do not lock me up again in that awfully small white room, I really did not like it in there.
Please do not burn me at the stake for showing you a glimpse of my world.
Please do not cast me out in sin for being me.
Please let me live in my world, and I will let you live in yours.
Mar 6, 2025
Mar 6, 2025 at 10:19 AM UTC
"Let us put
Our hands together for you
Go ahead
Your view we second,
For ideas grow in a mind fecund!"
A support it was reckoned.
Contrariwise,recently
As it may sound sad
By a phony party
It turned out a fad
"Let us not stop to clap
Your freedom of speech
In the face to slap!"
What a mishap
What a mishap
Childish and selfish
Politicians are being seen
Wearing more than one cap--
Sometimes the constitution
On the back they tap
But, often they misconstrue,
Trample on it
Or use it as a trap--
Pursuant of evil ends
With the federal government
They adore to create
A rift or a gap!
A university gets off track
If it allows party members
Infest it
Freedom of speech to attack.
Dec 24, 2018
Dec 24, 2018 at 10:05 AM UTC
Where does my shadow end
and I begin?
Or, contrariwise,
where is my ending
and my shade’s beginning?
Captive
in my body’s helpless
state,
I am aware
of the detestable
but inexorable
consuming of my body
by its shadow.
Nov 30, 2016
Nov 30, 2016 at 7:29 PM UTC
Our souls deceive us; with incensed crossfire hurricane.
Thy constant belief gets adored,
Contrariwise my soul shudders.
I immolate my spirit along with the belief,
I bestow the will to the Lord: The Breaker of all chains . .
The immaculate hymn of a dynamic monk____
Emancipates me oftentimes,
The vortex of my mind never let me
be uncommitted____
Despite a splendiferous incandescent
Translocates me from the untamed pain to ecstasy.
May 5, 2019
May 5, 2019 at 10:56 AM UTC