"convoluted" poems
De-winged and flightless
is the dragonfly
that tried to slip by
in my slipstream,
It found instead the pickup
traversing the alleyways
of my convoluted imagination.
I don’t know why I’m driving,
ever driving someplace
unrealized and unexplored.
I feel so disconnected,
I feel so disrespected by the world
sometimes
But that’s not fair
it has been good to me.
I feel so disconnected
sometimes
and yet it comes in times
when I’m most consumed
most surrounded.
Maybe I’m just tired
and the walls around me quiver only
from the struggles of my waking eyes,
Maybe I’m just bitter
that I can’t have the perfect life
and feel as if nothing could be better,
Maybe I’m affected
by this liquid life I’m draining from my cup
in hopes of finding a different day
at the bottom.
Is it jealousy that lingers in my mind
or mere longing tinged with a heavy
dose of confusion?
I am confused.
And yet I’m still alive
unlike my dragonfly
and so I stumble onward.
-BRD
Nov 22, 2010
Nov 22, 2010 at 4:03 PM UTC
Convoluted & Polluted
Distraught & Disjointed
Corrupted & Addicted
Emotion human condition
Toil & Deprivation
Choice & Inhibition
Arrogance & Suspicion
Make your self decision
Want & Understanding
Seek & Sophistication
Experience & Learning
All on the itinerary
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 4:20 AM UTC
I convince myself
conforming my thoughts
changing my memories
lies
I tell others
relaying imagery
that has never been seen
by my own eyes
but I believe them to be true
the stories
insanity
my own lies
turn to fact in my mind
and i wonder
what is real anymore
confusion
my life is a lie
my mind is convoluted
but sometimes it is better that way
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 3:14 PM UTC
[Hashtag]MeToo
Here it goes again,
trending on Insta and Facebook.
Where real awareness stems.
Mind the sarcasm,
social media’s a powerful tool
not knockin’ that.
I wonder though,
does the mind of the follower
understand the context of the hash?
Do they get it should be a call to action?
Not necessarily at the keyboard.
More like on the couch with their children,
Giving the conversation of consent.
Most people do not even understand it by definition .
The meaning of yes and no convoluted by scenario.
Bias boils over like milk and water over full flame.
The posts bubble out and stick to the side of the pan,
quickly drying; leaving their mark.
Until the soap and warm water flows over them,
and the steam evaporates the confessions.
Until they are again whispers we all hear and know.
It’s whispers from the alley ways,
and from married couples bedroom doors.
The woman is the property,
the man is the proprietor.
We refuse to address the real problems,
the failures of our up-bringers.
We point fingers and slay names
yet the statistics provide the truth.
One in four for females, one in sixteen for males.
We all have been violated, slandered, and forced to say
[Hashtag]MeToo
Not going to say I did not share it,
I know the touch of unwanted hands,
the invasive ***********
All for the sake of the insanity,
in repeating a useless gesture.
The only difference is
My hashtag went to my Senator.
Jul 6, 2018
Jul 6, 2018 at 9:25 AM UTC
Mad
Angry and disturbed
Perturbed by your absurd words
Their rhythm ring sing songs on & on
Wrongly depicting me as the beast who depletes we
Condemned and prosecuted for convoluted convictions
Incarcerated despite fair trial meanwhile
Defendant roams free, though guilty
So I suffer when her rough mood cannot bebuffered
And somehow the blame is on me, what a shame it would be
If I had a fair trial, and you were beguiled by my vengeance
But Corinthians bestowed on me that love hold no grudge
So I won't budge,
This time.
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 1:06 AM UTC
Life reduced to a ticking clock,
As shriveled men desperately clasp
To slick tomes filled with diagrams
Of shadowy glass towers, convoluted machines
And factories with a singular purpose:
To manufacture their own existence.
The Plague spreads to druidic forests
Where those who simply existed
Overcome with glutinous ambition
Demolish those majestic columns
Which supported equilibrium
While the world gleefully cheers.
Oct 16, 2014
Oct 16, 2014 at 7:38 PM UTC
At night,
when the sea is still,
you can't tell sky from water,
and everything is
convoluted mirrors
spiraling away into darkness:
an abyss of serpentine stars,
warping the night sky
into a kaleidoscope
of constellations.
The sky is full of stars,
and I get the euphoric sensation
that I am floating in space,
suspended in stellar time
with nothing but oblivion
and pinpricks of light
around me.
Somehow,
this brings me comfort.
It is reassuring
to pretend as though
I am significant
in this world.
Nov 13, 2015
Nov 13, 2015 at 4:00 PM UTC
The river is polluted
The skies are grey in falling night
The stars are hidden from our sight
Constellations convoluted
Bilge water and bile
Corrupted hearts so vile
Defile of a sacred form
This is not divine
Only desecration
The river is polluted
The seeds we plant do not survive
And even life is doomed to die
The trees are all uprooted
We want the leaves
We want the flowers
We want the scent of the forest
The river is polluted
Our dismay is all man-made
Unwholesome branch that holds no shade
Our hope for shelter all eluted
Brackish is the water
Swim if you care to drown
We take giant gulps
Deluded with hope
And still we die of thirst
Jul 8, 2016
Jul 8, 2016 at 5:09 AM UTC
Cobalt. Gunmetal. Pastel. Powder. Forget-me-not.
Out of all the blues,
She has the eye color with no name
The eye color that is slowly driving me insane.
Who gave her the right?
To have something so beautiful
I see blue everywhere;
In paintings, photographs—even the air
There are no crayons that can capture it
Not even color codes on computers can match her eyes
Her eyes are the space between the rippling depths of the ocean and the shards of reflected sky
They are the eyes that squint a bit as she smirks because she thinks she's sly
No matter how much I glance to the left during lunch
The color escapes my mind and simply becomes a concept
In my thoughts frustration likes to roam
If it weren't for the non-existent green, her eyes would look like sea foam
But here is no green—
Only hundred year old glaciers, rivers, and stormy skies
I don't even know what blue is anymore
As angering as they are, her eyes are still something I adore
I'm tempted to just ask her what color they are,
But that would mean that I don't pay attention
To do so would be like mistaking a stranger for your dad
Everyone will become apprehensive and think that I have gone mad
Her placid gaze tends to bore through my shell
I feel vulnerable— like she can see my dilapidated soul
But I know that she means no harm;
She is amiable and full of charm
Who knew blue could mean so much
And still be convoluted?
Blue washes the shore with the push and pull of the tides
Blue has managed to stain my thoughts and dye my insides
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 10:33 AM UTC
once in my sanctuary
it came in a loud gallop
followed by a wallop
my sorrowful lumbar
detaching the fear
of a clumsy blunder
shifted away from
the law of physics
an emptied vessel unmoved
like a sealed vacuum
certain a final curtain
pin drop in code of silence
light time alliances
whooshing me into
ethereal plains
a sublime hemisphere
of infinitesimal space, time
an indescribable beyond
gentle breezes
feathery light teases
soon a star-gazing eyes
darted through a
zero gravity galaxy of an
endless empyrean expanse
a’turnin spherical sight
orange white stripes
rosely red spot
churning roiling clouds
speckled dusty rings
what beauteous it shrouds
why am I here
a knowing voice appeared
melodically close but I
can only behold afar
of an ethereally existential
interstellar manifold
questioning mind
told of convoluted ways
as seen and heard
the rhymes and seasons but
for one and the only reason
mankind's whisper'd words
entrance to the portal
as did my dawned immortal
met a peaceful assembly
I lay in days, this rapturous gifts
what divine effulgence of
a truly cosmic lift
Jul 14, 2018
Jul 14, 2018 at 10:24 AM UTC
Orange capsules of condensed vitamin C
Tumble out onto my cracked,
Outstretched palm,
As I arch my spine towards the bathroom sink,
Scooping lukewarm water from the faucet
Into my half closed mouth-
The tiny pills clog my upturned throat:
Just two of the numerous solutions
To a world too numb
To contest.
I've never felt more alive,
Than when I'm drowning my body
With handfuls of tap water
And magic remedies bottled up and
Marketed to a world
Afraid of growing old.
Lining the wall of local drug stores,
One isle over from office supplies
And scented laundry detergent.
Multicolored, multipurpose-
Labels proclaim the fountain of youth
To anyone alive enough to fear it.
There's never enough of reality
To reach our depleted veins
Through the ever present forms
Of the world. Enough isn't
Enough, until we've convoluted it into a tiny
Plastic oval, and forced it down the throats
Of those well enough to swallow it.
Pharmaceutical companies proclaim their
Daily gospel in the linoleum streets
Of hospital waiting rooms
And local grocery stores,
As I cross my heart and count the
Hours until my next prescribed dose
Of complacency. Who knew happiness
Could have the bitter after taste of
Vitamin B or
The credibility of Zoloft.
The sandman has been replaced by Benadryl,
While creativity lies stagnant
Beneath adderall's indifferent thumb.
Obsession is a 26 letter alphabet,
Strung together by a bunch of deficiencies,
Incoherently droning on
To the burden of Man,
And flickering neon light
Of a drive-thru pharmacy.
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 1:41 AM UTC
A root of confusion in math
is not knowing whether a term
is a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb.
An equation is nothing but
a string of nouns.
But I may think about these nouns,
by their adjective or adverb
alternatives, for example,
which convolute the matter.
Verbs in math are really the outliers.
Thus, I've been thinking wrong
with "math is a verb" mentality.
The most common math terms are
nouns, which function alone
as subjects and objects.
What I think of as "doing math"
is akin to "doing porch".
It entails a deck, railing, stairs,
a chair, a roof.
So too, does math include these
things.
I walk on the stairs and deck.
I sit on the chair.
I enjoy the roof's shade.
So too, the things of math are
used via terms which are not
included usually in math terminology.
Almost the only verb used in
math is "think" which is convoluted
by the subjects/objects which I
employ during thinking.
Jul 6, 2021
Jul 6, 2021 at 11:34 PM UTC
If you want to call me vegan,
I'll not fight with you,
although the statement's not quite true
It's not exactly wrong either
It's true I don't eat meat, or eggs, or anything with wings or legs,
but in way of a confession, you might find in my possession
a leather belt or shoes,
which for a vegan is bad news
I don't really mean to quibble, concerning what I nibble,
but I'm trying here to say in this convoluted way
that for a vegan it's all about the animals
I'm not in it for the animals, but rather for my health and for the planet
I surely won't deny it -- I eat a vegan diet,
and to some degree I care what fellow creatures have to bear,
and resulting from my wishin' for optimal nutrition
they benefit from my selfish choice to not consume them
But in the end you have to see that I eat this way for me
I don't deserve the noble label, but when I'm sitting at your table,
if you want to call me vegan,
then I'll not disagree.
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 7:13 PM UTC
Near, near are my lucid dreams.
Sultry sleep, augmenting realty
Today, nothing will be as it seems.
Flashes of translucent, magnified beams,
Lighting lingers in treacherous tonality
Near, near are my lucid dreams.
The water flows in upside-down streams,
Rivers rage in confused commonalities
Today, nothing will be as it seems.
The mechanic roar of howling screams,
Shrapnel shrieking in utter infinities.
Near, near are my lucid dreams.
Pulleys construct convoluted schemes
While pollution parades in notorious normality
Today, nothing will be as it seems.
Awake. I go forth, my mind again seamed.
Awake. I go back, into a world of formality.
Near, near are my lucid dreams
Today, nothing will be as it seems.
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 12:19 AM UTC
I don't want to go a
gentle journey,
from convoluted to
convalescence.
I quit drinking again;
found love in
the psych ward.
She's my broken-winged
angel.
So much pain behind that
sweet smile.
She's drinking again,
and I can't fix her.
It hurts, like an arrow
through the stomach.
I have a rabbit that comes
to my yard.
She lies in the same
spot every day.
So much so, that
she has worn down a
place for herself--the surrounding
grass grows around her.
She feels safe.
I feed her spinach, and my
brother sings her
show tunes.
That's what we get
for having a drama
teacher for a father.
Thanks, Dad.
It's been an unseasonably
cold April.
I feel sorry for Harvey;
That's her name, thanks
again Dad.
I talk to her softly.
"Hi, baby--what are you doing?
Do you want to come in?"
She doesn't answer. I'm sober.
I want to take care of her...
Both of them...
My two little bunnies.
It's cold, and the wind is
blowing hard,
beneath a mean grey sky.
May 1, 2022
May 1, 2022 at 6:11 PM UTC
It's unfortunate that Parisians
Are very hard to bear,
In terms of flash obsequiousity,
They drive me to despair!
And patience is an attribute
I don't profess to have
To mercifully administer
When accents veer to Slav.
Baltics look like jellyfish,
The Germans are obscene
And loud and overbearing
But the Swiss are very clean.
Italians are a swarthy lot
Who gourmandize on food
And sacrifice their suavity
By being impudently crude.
The Spanish are no better,
In fact they are probably worse,
For obsessing in the blood sports
I actually rate them in reverse.
Starchiness is British
They're convoluted to the core,
The Old Boy system's lost it's sheen
Aspirants flock to it no more.
The Yanks are looking slightly crass
Whilst fighting foreign wars,
Their pinky held up squeaky clean
To call "foul" to China's flaws.
China sits inscrutably
Holding all the cards
Waiting for the moment
To strike beneath the guards.
India and Pakistan
Are squabbling like kids
The uproar over Kashmir
Rates them lower than the Yids.
The Yids are walking tightropes
With Iran's nuclear ******
Whilst currying Yank approval,
Eventual bombing is a must.
The Dutch behave so anally
They're always proven right
When faced with rigid negatives
They blanch with haunches tight.
But not the Argentineans
They love to dance and flirt,
To chase the senorita
Cavorting in the scarlet skirt.
The South Pacific's wallowing
They're adrift from World affairs
Oz's self preoccupation
Mirrors Kiwi's vacant stares.
Africa's way past comment
Lost to heat and dust,
Warfare, **** and pillage
And the rest decayed by rust.
Eskimos are OK
Clean living on the ice
The population static,
Zer-O pollution's nice!
Marshalg
@theGate
Mangere Bridge
14 April 2009
May 2, 2010
May 2, 2010 at 12:08 AM UTC
The salted air elates a feeling of real real.
And by real real, I mean the realist real there is.
Child like intuition and loss in present ecstasy
Underlying a layered and angsted mind.
I loved a psychopath as a best friend
But finally
His confusion clawed at my chakras with convoluted and displaced passion
But on Protection Island
I feel
Protected.
Whether the next sunrise meets me through the dingy drapes of a budget hostel, awash in a strange and urban melancholy wrapped warmly on all sides
Or on a windy beach with the blue flow of sparkled wash and distant cloud capped peaks and Dover-beacon ferries which remind me of novelty globes and my father
The buzz of early morning travel as a child
I will be fine.
To lighten my load I hid The Dhamapada and St. Francis of Assisi in the hopes and faith that they would be left in peace blanketed in underbrush
Being peacefully caressed by ocean wind and the beautifully dilapidated wood-house
The protectors warm grin of welcome.
I want to feel okay again
And I feel like okay is finally waking up from her peaceful slumber
Returning from vacation to remind and comfort my unassured and pummeled mind
Like a lover returning from a followed dream
A long, warm embrace which says it all
No words for I love you
Just a feeling and oneness as old as the world itself.
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 4:52 PM UTC
I’ve seen genius so fixed on itself
as to be monkeys, squealing
wicked-itchy
watching a record whirl
in the same drugged circle
33 and a 1/3—circa 1969
This—their eternal brilliant conclusion
their e=mc2
This—their Final Solution
their inner-spring
Their convoluted complexity
as the hands of their clocks
fly off, striking me in the face
Alas!
—the equation that would solve
the mystery of whistling “Dixie”
that would feed the dogs
and “seize the day”!
This penetrated groove
This—track, eternally diminishing
toward a point on a label
at which two ***** intersect
and then...
...cease to be....
Aug 17, 2017
Aug 17, 2017 at 5:27 PM UTC
In the twilight of immeasurable hope
I run, I pace, I stagger.
A moon of sorts tucks its hefty beams
Behind the gauzy, twisted zephyr,
As if teasing that its crisp, round, clarity
is merely an echo of a distant, convoluted story:
a myth.
One moment I am carrying out my quotidian realities
Unfiltered, unbridled, lucid,
Running my fingers through laughing waves
of golden, auburn richness,
Letting my wavering, billowing hair
slowly melt into the quavering, trembling wind…
When suddenly-
I am caught in the labyrinth of veils.
I, with my hair and my warmth,
I am auriferous.
And these sheets, oh these hangings!
They float like century-worn cobwebs
And they ensnare me so.
This is where the tangled messages
And mangled mixed signals
All wriggle themselves into form
And make their zombie graveyard.
And yet there are sparks,
Little voices trapped in burning baubles
Shining like the ever-loving soul of the universe,
Which whisper the stories of the moon-thing
Beyond the borders of this haze-land.
Sometimes I attempt to fashion
these ethereal sparklings into my hair.
They suggest insanity, so close to my ears,
And I can’t fill my soul with enough…
I cling to the faith that they will lead me out
Into the amaranthine beyond.
I come back here often,
Always hoping that today will be the day
That the beams from above
Will reach to seek me.
For that, I will love the mists,
And carnally sip away
At the nebulous, crepuscular,
Pools of Fantasy.
But in retrospect,
I should never have told you
That your name means “Purple” to me.
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 1:35 AM UTC
In that night
there was a deeper night,
in sorrow a deeper sorrow,
in your sorrowful eyes more
more sorrowful eyes I descried,
the deep night of your eyes
as I lay beside you, your head,
then your head lying on night's
pillow, deeper than a hollow hole
filled with tender tears, as you told me
of the night, the deeper night of your life,
your hair wet with deeper tears
on night's side of your visage,
when you had to leave your son
to save yourself and him, a hurt
that still hurts, a deeper night hurt
you shared with me through deep night
sobs, deeper sobs, wetting your cheeks
and neck and night hair, the hurts,
the deeper night hurts that robbed
you of yourself and him, of how you
had to go in order to return, the sinuous
path, convoluted and constrained,
to leave the night, to come back in
the day. You knew day followed night,
but your hollow heart howled at the
rending end that began a deeper night.
All I could do was hold you in the deep,
the deeper night, and let you sob and
shake, only to awake to that brighter day.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019 at 10:55 AM UTC
We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City.
Nothing would surprise him.
The beast in the jungle was what he saw--
Edith Wharton's obfuscating older brother. . .
He fled the demons
of Manhattan
for fear they would devour
his inner ones
(the ones who wrote the books)
& silence the stifled screams
of his protagonists.
To Europe
like a wandering Jew--
WASP that he was--
but with the Jew's
outsider's hunger. . .
face pressed up
to the glass of ***
refusing every passion
but the passion to write
the words grew
more & more complex
& convoluted
until they utterly imprisoned him
in their fairytale brambles.
Language for me
is meant to be
a transparency,
clear water gleaming
under a covered bridge. . .
I love his spiritual sister
because she snatched clarity
from her murky history.
Tormented New Yorkers both,
but she journeyed
to the heart of light--
did he?
She took her friends on one last voyage,
through the isles of Greece
on a yacht chartered with her royalties--
a rich girl proud to be making her own money.
The light of the Middle Sea
was what she sought.
All denizens
of this demonic city caught
between pitch and black
long for the light.
But she found it
in a few of her books. . .
while Henry James
discovered
what he had probably
started with:
that beast, that jungle,
that solipsistic scream.
He did not join her
on that final cruise.
(He was on his own final cruise).
Did he want to?
I would wager yes.
I look back with love and sorrow
at them both--
dear teachers--
but she shines like Miss Liberty
to Emma Lazarus' hordes,
while he gazes within,
always, at his own
impenetrable jungle.
3.2k
He only imbibes because of his dipsomania.
She only practices onanism because she's afraid he'll impregnate her.
He despises her monomania.
She's too affable, almost to the point of being obsequious.
He's too acrimonious and muzzy.
She knows she's a bit of a coquette.
He thinks he's a cuckold.
She used to be flighty until she fell into this convoluted dystopia.
He used to find it scintillating to get sozzled.
She just wants a lark once in a while.
His iniquity makes him want her to be lascivious.
Her every fatuity leads to a cabal.
He's too opaque and insipid.
She has to iterate and reiterate everything she says.
He feels his infatuation is unrequited.
She finds this unproblematic.
He doesn't imbue her with anything anymore.
She thinks he's unpitying of that.
He'll malinger tomorrow.
She'll wonder if it's all adventitious or kismet.
She can't handle his odium.
He can't stand her ten dollar words.
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 7:58 PM UTC
Silence. Solvent. Substituted;
subsidised
then marginalised
instituted and muted.
And, often
persecuted.
Rationanalised
by abstraction:
every minuscule
interaction dissected.
All that is left is convoluted,
misconstrued
and rejected.
The lucid bewildered.
The disillusioned bejeweled:
rooted in their state of mind.
Effortlessly self-proclaiming
restraining
and refraining
purging the imagination:
the waning of maligned mankind.
And all of his
illuminated limitations.
Jul 3, 2014
Jul 3, 2014 at 10:38 PM UTC
~
*She reads the flaxen paper on her wall,
sees its patterns,
touches them.
They project her confusion in cold chamber light.
Stained hands,
convoluted heartbeat,
she creeps into the wall's design.
"Hysteria every time she opens her mouth," said the doctor.
"Rest will cure her."
She is nostrum,
and not permitted
to participate in her own diagnosis.
A man decides how she is allowed to perceive
and speak about the world around her.
Next time you're alone, look quickly at the wallpaper.
Look for the patterns and lines and faces on the wall.
Look, if you can, for her, visible only
out of the corner of your eye...*
~
Sep 16, 2021
Sep 16, 2021 at 8:08 AM UTC
Here now by many paths convoluted,
Ever trying the thoughts new, acted on.
Heeding just,streams conscious flowing,
Changed and morphed in an instant blinking.
Hair long,then shaved, now streaked orange grey
Suits to jeans,tore them,robes spiritual,now **** pray!
Was straight,turned metro,for all open,but curious still,
Body clean,got pierced, now adorning pasts tattooed!
Gurus, philosophies many, still a fool ever journeying.
Heard Bach,reggaed to Marley,wood-stocked,now fused.
Loved intense,let go easy,Kama sutras experimented on.
Traveled afar,lived as a local,now a foreigner everywhere,
Hip-pied from smoke to grass,yoga to parties raved hard.
Against wars, sat in for peace elusive,fought all,now stoic,
Never shocked or surprised,took all as came,now strong.
The set mind,everchanging,the physical a compliment cosy,
Unrecognizable now,existing totally, being happy, normally?
Many shout, freak! I smile,walk on to my home in Bohemia!
Oct 14, 2012
Oct 14, 2012 at 12:52 AM UTC